


The Millennium Deal - Four: Extraction

by Cara_Loup



Series: The Millennium Deal [5]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Adventure, Friendship/Love, M/M, Mystery, Romance, Telepathic Bond, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 14:37:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5420819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cara_Loup/pseuds/Cara_Loup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“When this is over,” Luke started. “I want you to know that I don’t expect you to stay... I mean, just pick up where you left off, or anything like that. If you want to make a new start somewhere else, I won’t get in the way.”	<br/>Words that he’d used himself, another time, another place, rebounding with jagged irony. <i>When Luke comes back, I won’t get in the way</i>. A feeling like a loose cannon right behind that offer. And now that it backfired, he didn’t want to know where Luke got the notion.	<br/>“Well, there’s no rush.” Han tried for a casual tone. “Do I look like I’m about to bolt or something?”	<br/>“Not exactly,” Luke answered his purely rhetorical question. “But something’s missing, and I’m not sure what it is.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Millennium Deal - Four: Extraction

** Four: Extraction  **

Over Mos Eisley, the cloudless sky hung like a polished slate, western horizons frayed by the glare of setting suns. Luke eased the shuttle into a private docking bay, his hands stiff on the controls. Han’s eyes were fixed straight ahead as they’d been throughout the brief jump. His features a study in granite control, barely breathing. But the moment they touched solid ground, he was out of his chair.

“Now what?”

A forced imitation of alertness and practical thinking, nothing more. Luke didn’t think to call him on his act.

“We should find a place to stay. Artoo’s got our jump coordinates, he’ll get in touch with Chewbacca and Castor.”

“And they’ll meet us here?” Han pushed both hands into his pockets and stared at the sandy walls as if to stare them down.

“If they can. At the very least, we’ll hear from Artoo.”

“Right.” Han set himself in motion, brushing past the docking bay’s owner who’d appeared at the door, a gaunt Kubaz swathed in coarse robes.

“Let me take care of this.” Pointless to say it. Luke fumbled for the credit pouch at his belt and went through inevitable barter in fast-forward. A taut thrum under his breastbone.

“Thanks,” he murmured when the Kubaz touched a split thumb to his brow. The spurious refuge of routine already coming undone.

Outside in the narrow street, Han watched over idle drifts of pedestrian traffic, intent like a sentinel. Copper sunset caught on his hair and sharpened the lines of his profile.

“Come on,” Luke said, forcing a casual tone with near-desperation. “Let’s look for a rent-out place in one of the southern districts. It’s going to be... less obvious.”

The notion of pursuit glanced off into brusque silence. Han pulled up his shoulders, indifference edged with black denial, and walked down the street as if taking directions by remote control.

When they’d picked a lodge, half an hour later, he paused at the room’s center. Stumped by the bleakness of ordinary things, a dead end, silence hanging thready and impersonal between these walls. Two beds under the painted ceiling, a low table, an empty shelf set into an alcove, small round windows like portholes. An austere room with no view.

“Want to go out?” Luke suggested when the silence wrapped too close around him, searching for the weakness that would snap under strain.

“Yeah. This is...” A vacant gesture, and no change in the rigid set of Han’s shoulders.

_Like a prison cell. Another pretense_. Luke avoided the empty, brittle look, as if he could protect Han that way, and didn’t bother to lock the door behind them. They’d arrived with nothing but the clothes they wore, nothing but the silence that couldn’t be breached.

They walked again, past the last line of shuttered homes, breathing air like glass. A whiff of some petrol derivate vied with the saline scents from the desert. On the edge of Luke’s mind, myriad perceptions registered, spelling home and stagnant time. A cobalt blue evening made gray ridges of the storage sheds and outhouses that fringed the city limits. Sand crunched beneath their boots, a false, dry rhythm bound to falter where the sandy track ran into open flats.

They stopped, and Han said nothing, though the muscles in his throat and jaw seemed to strain around another curse. His face turned to the desert, perhaps searching for relief in the vast, breathing space out there.

“Gotta be alone for a while. Don’t wait up, okay?” One shoulder lifted, a jerky movement that might have been meant as apology and turned out a compromise that mended nothing. 

“It’s okay,” Luke said and damned his want for words, but Han had started out without another backward glance. _I’ll wait anyway, don’t you know?_

He settled down on a sloping sand drift, memory quoting the dangers of the nocturnal desert from Uncle Owen’s lectures — sandpeople, krayt dragons, toxic sandcrab bites, and getting lost in the wilderness — each discarded with an effort. Han could protect himself. Against anything.

_Anything except this_ , Luke thought. Through all the years that he’d owned the Falcon, Han had always expected to go down with her. Now she’d been broken out of his life like the pivot that held it all together. Grief cramped in Luke’s chest, the lean silhouette already swallowed up by the distance, the curdling twilight.

_Let him come around in his own time_ , Luke told himself. Sometimes the need for isolation grew sharp as hunger and just as imperative. _But not now_... At the center of his chest stirred an old hollow pain that could never be shared, reminding him of absolute limits, no matter how he ached for Han now.

_Not true_. New memories contradicted him, the week he’d spent reaching with blind insistence, the guidance he’d found on Neotar.

Luke bowed his head and willed his hands to unclench — _calm, open up_ — the first step in a difficult exercise. All around him, the sand exhaled residual heat, the distant bark of a durga drifting over from the crags in the east. His mind formed an image out of swirling emptiness, flowing lines like the tracks of his own breathing that settled into the curves of sand dunes. Wind painting unreadable patterns across the sculptured slopes.

Time slipped, and the contour of his former life drew nearer, a sense of belonging and expectation resurrected from the mixture of scents and small sounds. The rustle of sand grains that never stopped. A faint metal clanking from the vaporators on the ridge, like the unchanging backdrop to all his dreams of flight.

The slow rhythm of footsteps crossing over from imagination into reality.

When he looked up, Han stood before him, and something had changed, his expression now raw with grief, no longer a cold front of defense.

“’M sorry.” Bitten off, his mouth set into a pale line.

“For what?” Luke rose swiftly, as if Han might bolt, all the composure he’d marshaled fracturing at a heartbeat. “Han, _I’m_ sorry, I should’ve guessed, should’ve done something—”

“Like there was anything you could do?” Han inhaled violently. “It’s my own damn fault.”

He whipped aside, as if jolted by loss all over again. Into the silence escaped a choked sound, less than a breath, that betrayed more than he’d ever let slip before — more than the sounds of pleasure or the wrenched gasps of pain when he’d crashed to his knees on Nam Korlis, defenseless.

Luke took a step forward and paused where Han would be able to sense him. Too soon to touch.

“My own fault that she’s... gone.” Words ripped out of him as if pulled by a barbed hook.

“How could you know?” Luke asked.

“ _You_ knew there was something wrong. I just played along like a fucking moron!”

Anger had wound its way back to the surface, with a momentum that made Luke wonder. “There’s not a lot that I know for certain,” he said. “And I had no idea what your partner was planning.”

But none of it could reach Han, his mind set on a collision course with that crest of self-accusation, his shoulders squared obstinately.

“Tell me.” A sudden blast of gritty wind lashed out at them.

“What I said to you...” Han breathed out roughly. “You were right. I could’ve killed us both.”

“I should’ve stopped you before. I wasn’t thinking too clearly either.”

The wind carried the durga’s howl over to them, a piercing note of desolation.

“I lost it completely.” Han shook his head. “She’s just an old freighter, goddamnit.”

_And so much more to you_. Luke raised his hand for a gentle, gliding touch along Han’s arm. “We’ll get her back. Whatever it takes.”

A promise he was going to keep, balled tight under his breastbone.

“You don’t have to say that.”

“But I want to.”

Han turned abruptly, hands caught at his shoulders, then clutched into fists again. Chest tight with the smoldering ache, Luke banded his arms around him, around those short, fretful breaths and the rage that was twisting to break loose. “Let it come. I can take it.”

He held on harder, every muscle strung tight against the coming storm, and couldn’t let go again — couldn’t, like this was his very last chance. A tremor caged between them — _I need you_ — out of control, and he refused to seize it back. For such a long time, he’d lived at a safe distance from everything that mattered.

“Han, I’m here,” he murmured.

Relief reeled through him with unsettling force when Han sagged in his hold — _here, alive_ — hands spread out over his shoulder blades, pressing down. Locked together while the crags, the shadowed settlement, the distant sounds of living fell away, into the pit of desert night, a great void filled with cavorting winds. They stood motionless for a moment and another, until Han straightened and muttered an awkward, “thanks.”

He took a short step backwards, one hand raking slowly through dark hair, claiming space to regain perspective.

By unspoken consent, they turned back, the distance seeming much shorter while the wind moved against them like something ancient and wistful, gauging the scope of night.

Back in the lodge, someone had placed a water jug on the table, and the room seemed more generous in darkness. Only a thread of amber fell in through one of the windows, feeble lighting from the building across the street that revealed the tired lines of Han’s body when he returned from the shower and flopped down on the bed by the wall.

Luke went through his own preparations for the night with automated ease. With the labored puffing of the sonic shower, the sodium flavor of Bestine mouthwash, routines took over that had carried and confined him for his first eighteen years. Here, he could find his way in the dark and blend in, familiar air brushing his bare body when he crossed the room and lay down next to Han without hesitation. From the bedspread rose the faint scent of lemonleaf.

Stretched out on his back, eyes closed, Han had settled into a stiff posture of quiescence. Holding himself motionless as if to trick sleep.

Uncertain how much closeness he could accept, Luke stilled and looked up at the ceiling, at abstract patterns in black and ocher that were common all over Tatooine. So much like the ornaments in the Lars homestead, a safe, domestic sky. Expectation thrummed inside him, almost as diffuse and indefinite as it had been years ago, skin heated by the scrub of sonic cleansing.

All these weeks, he’d wanted nothing so bad as Han’s presence next to him, warm skin and subtle pulse piercing even the deepest folds of sleep. The quick leap of awareness in the morning with Han’s arm draped across his chest, riding lazily on his breaths.

“Luke...”

He turned to lie on his side, running one hand up to Han’s shoulder, across bunched muscles that refused to release their combat alertness.

“Can’t believe it that you—” Han cut himself short with a gesture.

“What?”

“Everything. That you’re here, that we... I don’t know.” Bewilderment replaced the grievance in his voice. “Just... happened so fast.”

_And I can’t help being glad for it_. Luke leaned over, heart beating faster in his throat as he groped for the right kind of comfort, the right touch. “I’ve been thinking of you... all the time. Felt like months.”

“I know. Me too.”

His mouth against the skin below Han’s jaw, tracing the timbre of words back to the source, vibrant pulsebeats in the hollow of Han’s throat. His lips shadowed every breath while Han’s arms reached to wrap around his back and tugged him closer.

When he lifted his head again, a different look rose in Han’s eyes, perceptible even in the loose shadows. A big hand slid up into his hair and coaxed his head down.

The kiss was slow and probing, deepening with reassurance more than hunger. Temporary shelter, where thoughts didn’t reach. A moan caught in Luke’s throat, vibration more than sound, at the smooth weaving play of Han’s tongue against his own. His fingers carding through the fuzz on Han’s chest, in thoughtless response to the hand that splayed over the small of his back. Aimless touches that soothed and excited him, and after all this time felt completely new. Or perhaps it was Tatooine, the resonance of memories that carried like distant sounds across the wastelands. He shivered, curving his spine into the glide of Han’s palm, warmth traveling rich and slow through his lower back and into his belly.

They shifted to lie side by side, kissing and touching without hurry. Under his hands, Luke could feel the hard-wired tension slip gradually, unraveling into exhaustion. Han pressed against his side, holding on close, and they finally stilled like that.

“Think you’ll be able to sleep now?” Luke murmured, lips brushing the dark hair. Half-dizzy with the pleasant heat that curled in his groin and didn’t urge more.

“Yeah... I guess so.” Han’s mouth moved against his upper chest, followed by a long breath. “’M too tired to think straight anyway.”

“Then don’t try.” He closed his eyes, and after a while let the wash of fatigue carry him towards a lesser degree of sleep. 

 

Though there’d been no sound, no movement, he snapped awake as if to a voice in danger, night wearing thin over an edge of vigilance. Han lay with his back turned towards him, a slanting muscle tight across his ribs.

When Luke reached around, a hand clutched abruptly at his wrist, holding him trapped like an intruder from hostile dreams.

“What is it?”

A short flinching, and in it he felt thoughts like cuts across Han’s mind, memories that kept yanking at him.

“I can see it happening,” a pressured voice answered, raspy with sleep and resentment. “The Falcon a fireball. The shuttle blowing up.”

“You took us out of the line of fire.”

A breath expelled with rough refusal. “If you hadn’t been there...”

“But I was.”

He wondered if Han could accept that, a choice taken from him when he’d lost sight of choices altogether. A slow breath heaved where his hand was held captive against Han’s chest. Luke relaxed his fingers, letting them brush against the curve of ribs.

“There are times when... when that happens,” he said against the back of Han’s neck. “When you lose control.”

Damp strands clung to his lips when he placed them over the protruding bone at the top of Han’s spine. Sympathetic response seized up in his stomach — he could tell why Han kept his face averted, staring hard at a shadow-curtained wall — the shame of being helpless, pointless as it was, made corrosive by pride.

Han’s fist opened as if by force of will and stretched over his hand, their fingers aligned. “She was... everything I had. All I ever needed.”

“That’s not true,” Luke cut in, protest spiking sharply in his gut. “You’ve got a life, everything you are. There’s Chewie—”

“And this.”

In one abrupt motion, Han turned over and pulled him close — a collision of ribs and elbows and awkward want — urging them together in a hard embrace. Luke flung an arm around Han’s torso, face pressed against the side of his neck. Nerves flaring with intimate contact, like a heated brush-stroke from his throat to his belly when Han tipped his chin up to take his mouth.

For a moment, he forgot to breathe, the sudden urgency of Han’s mouth on his own overriding every thought, the blind upsurge within even more unsettling. Breath strained at his lungs, around sensations that splintered through him without focus, a rash flare-up replacing the last night’s gentle heat. Han’s teeth jarred against his, a brief disruption lost to liquid currents when their tongues met and engaged, rebounding electric in the pit of Luke’s stomach.

One hand framed his jaw and the other skimmed from back to flank to cup his rising erection with brusque directness. An instant rush of blood met the rough pressure. Filling out, lifting with the jagged pulse that raced through him, a gasp released into Han’s mouth and consumed into his breath. Luke tangled his hand in the thick hair, spine arching at the velvet glide of Han’s cock against his thigh, stretching in response. Strong hands took hold of his shoulders and pushed him back against the mattress — a fast and furious ignition that fused unease with desire when Han settled over him. Trying so hard to lose himself.

Trapped under his weight, Luke groaned at the power surge charging his groin. Forced up against this need to surrender, he reached for something to anchor him, but there was no accord between the demands of his body and the restless impulse circling in his chest. He ran both hands down the length of Han’s back, tracing ridges of tense muscle. All that tension sustained a balance that could tilt at a wrong move, a random memory.

When they broke for air, Luke brushed the tangled fall of hair out of Han’s forehead, thumb stroking across his frown. With a muffled sound, Han buried his face at Luke’s shoulder, and in another instant levered himself away.

“All this time, I wanted—” He shook his head. “I can’t do this.”

“Han...”

Jolted back to himself, Luke realized that the small hours were making way for the long twilight that bleached Tatooine’s sky before dawn. He could see Han’s face clearly. Harsh lines of control faltered before violent grief that dragged in anger — and something else, the vague shadow of something older, buried deep enough to become intangible.

“You don’t have to.” He reached up to touch Han’s face, saw his eyes flicker in the direction of his fingers as if startled. “We can do anything we want.”

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that...” Mouth firming after an unsteady breath. “I just don’t know how to handle this.” Han flopped back, defeat admitted in a boneless sprawl, and scrubbed a hand across his face.

“Maybe we can figure it out together.” Luke turned onto his side, watching him out of his own confusion. _Talk to me_.

“It’s—” Han swallowed. “What I had before was only half a life anyway, and now... they’ve taken _everything_ from me. Like I’ve been stripped down and drained dry.”

“I know how it feels,” Luke said before he could consider.

“You do?” Han turned his head to look at him, steadier now, eyes unclouding.

“On Endor...” Luke trailed off, too much recollection welling now that he’d been caught off guard. “It doesn’t matter. I know what the Falcon means to you.”

“No, tell me.”

Luke glanced aside, pinned to that demand for truth, his chest flashing hot with it. He wasn’t prepared for this, even now — less now — when Han’s abrupt temper wore his own defenses thin.

“Been a long time that I couldn’t get through to you anymore,” Han said roughly.

Luke’s breath caught at the blunt impact of accusation, anger pushing outward, slamming into every barrier, and he sat up. The dizzy spin from passion to inquest made him want to get up and pace. “I don’t think you—”

“Luke, wait.”

The bedspread rustled to the floor as Han pushed up behind him, pale coils sinking into graceless folds, and an arm wrapped itself around Luke’s shoulders. After a tense moment, they settled together, into a rough symmetry of shaky breaths. Luke swallowed, his throat hurting for words, for something.

“It’s just... what you told me back on Ylab,” Han said slowly. “About not getting close to anyone. Had me thinking.” With every moment, his mind seemed to shift aim and focus away from himself, as if searching through a sea of static. “How difficult things got for you.”

_It’s not that bad_ , an automatic response leapt to the front, moorless without the shield of sobriety. Luke closed his eyes, Han’s breath warm against the side of his face. “I didn’t want to think about it for the longest time.”

“Can’t blame you.” Han’s voice was low, a hoarse note betraying pressure. “Didn’t mean to, either. Just wondering how you managed.”

“Not all that well.”

From the other side of the street, the yellow shine still made its incursion into the night, about to drown in seamless gray, then blue. Luke touched the hand that lay on his shoulder. Straining to make a connection, ever since they’d come here — but Han had no words for the loss, the hurt that splintered inside him. Maybe he could break his own silence now, pry something from it that made sense for them both.

“When I went to face my father, the Emperor... it took so much out of me.” Memories swam on the surface of his mind, blurry and disconnected from the loose energy that still ran wild through his body. “I went in ready to die and didn’t realize they might let me live. That was the hardest part.”

A sharp breath like a curse from Han, his fingers gripping for nerve.

“It sounds so strange now...” Luke let his head fall back.

“Don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come back,” Han muttered.

“...just that it changed everything.”

“Yeah.”

Against the back of his neck, Luke felt the strung muscles of Han’s arm, a leashed impulse, sharply defined against the soft air currents.

“It was what they could make of me,” he tried again, “and living with that knowledge.” Something trembled close under the surface, taking random shortcuts, words in a jumble — and he finally let them come.

“That they could so manipulate me. Palpatine — I could feel him press against my mind, pushing... for fear, for anger. He and Vader. They knew how to make me lose control. They seemed to know everything... what I’d missed, what I’d lost. What I wanted. Every reaction. Every feeling taken out of me, studied, used. And if I’d surrendered, we would’ve shared — they would have controlled me when I couldn’t—”

He broke off, scathing voices still alive inside him, turning over into temptation, falling into emptiness. From that raw place inside himself, he felt the gentle movement of Han’s fingers against his shoulder, incongruous, the sensation sliding up like wind out of the desert, reminding him of his own skin.

“After that, I felt hollowed out,” Luke finished. “A role to fill, but little left of me... or maybe I just didn’t know who I was anymore. Except, a Jedi.”

“That’s how it looked to me sometimes,” Han said, closer now, his mouth brushing the strands behind Luke’s ear. “When you showed up on Ylab, I thought maybe we’d get another chance.”

“...as if no feeling belonged to me anymore, and all I could do to hang on to myself was control. It’s not rational. I didn’t want it that way, but...” Against the weight of Han’s arm, his shoulders rose for a brief shrug. “I just couldn’t let go. Only when I reached into the Force... that’s when I felt free.”

A rasp of stubble against his cheek, Han’s chin coming to rest on his shoulder. _How could I not know what I want?_

“What I had there didn’t feel like freedom either.” Han’s free hand rose, and his arms made a circle around Luke, shifting him to the center. “I don’t know. Why we could never... be like this before.”

_Excuses_ , Luke thought. All those months since Endor, he’d struggled only against himself.

“I was afraid,” he started without thinking and caught up with himself midway, too late to stop, a chill raking him like a shadow out of his dreams. “That I’d always be alone with this... need, because no one could fill it.”

When he turned at last, Han’s eyes were searching him, so focused on him that he couldn’t guess the feelings at the back of that look. But perhaps he didn’t have to, not here, within a loose circle that contained everything this moment was.

“What d’you need, Luke?”

Too much to make it into words. He closed the distance, lips closing over the yielding gentleness of Han’s mouth, infinitely different — _let someone else take control, someone I trust, love_ — a gasp stirring from the bottom of his throat.

“You.”

A quick start tensed Han’s body, his arm looped tighter around Luke’s neck, and Luke could feel it run back through him, a rough current seeking a target.

“Isn’t that what you said,” he murmured, “about getting another chance?”

“Before I left...” Han’s mouth twitched, recalling with distant irony. “Felt like we were all leading cloned lives somehow. Not your fault. I didn’t think you needed me around any more than Leia does.”

“Wrong.” With more force than he’d intended, he fired his reply at the phalanx of doubts. _I just didn’t know_. 

“Show me.” A husky whisper against his neck, demanding direction and release.

Luke shifted, pulling Han alongside him, a pillow dropping unheeded to the floor. They wrapped around each other in an artless tangle, gripping hard to unlock an unspoken promise, and desire rushed back in like a flashtide. Luke felt himself move with it, into the patterns of instinct, a flush trailing the hands that quartered his body, hungry and restless. Nothing left of the grating discord he’d struggled to overcome — though in every touch flickered troubling questions, a volatile charge from the things he’d revealed, the painful uncertainty that Han had revealed to him — ungathered sparks of sensation gaining on him as Han’s mouth opened to his own. He clung to the taste, the shared breath that entered his bloodstream like an intoxicant, and answered with all of himself.

Falling back against the sheet, the truth a live wire in the depth of his body, his back arched with it. To be known and conquered, to find the lever inside himself that allowed this much — _so easy with you_ — and distracted again by the heat of Han’s mouth sucking skin below his throat. Propped on his elbows, Han bent over him, tasted him with passionate concentration, a pinch of teeth drawing sharp pleasure into his nipple, then Han’s tongue swathed across the flash-bright peak, swirling over exposed nerve. Luke buried his fingers in the dark hair, holding him there, breath shallow with the quick pangs that leapt from his chest to his groin.

When Han moved to his side again, Luke’s hands tracked over shortened breaths, coaxed ripples of muscle that sheeted over the long bones like water over sharp-edged rocks. A deeper tension coming undone in the lean frame. A kiss laid against the scar under Han’s mouth, for all the places that made up his past, the places recalled in his dreams. As if he could draw the memories out of Han’s body and catch them in a cupped hand.

The broken lines he stroked down Han’s chest and stomach loosened rampant energies — grief anger rebellion — uncoiling into rhythm, into swirls of pleasure. From the hard line of a hipbone, his hand followed the slant of muscle framing Han’s cock, the hard length swelling to his touch as he skimmed his fingers over the light skipping pulse, so close to the surface. Hips snapping forward to meet his touch, Han gasped through clenched teeth, a warm gust across Luke’s chest. Desire crawled like midday heat down his back, and pushed up breathless inside his ribcage.

He opened his legs to the pressure of Han’s thigh, and Han was over him, hips ground into him, fierce need throbbing against his own. Rushing over him, cresting from his own pulse — and he knew he still wasn’t ready. For this fevered, cascading intensity, shadowed against the ache of emptiness he’d unburied. No defenses left, no logic to assuage the familiar huge hollowness in his body. A hand stroked up his thigh, settling on his hip to pin him down as Han thrust against him. He clutched, arched in response, straining out of the security that had never meant more than endurance. Every breath raw in his lungs.

Between them, intimacy coiled in a sheen of sweat and driving urgency that forged a connection — the push and pull that anchored the rhythm in his backbone — and what if there was nothing more? Nothing but accidental needs dragging their bodies together, the rise and fall of desire nothing but effort, a desperate effort to crush them into one. His face rubbed against the coarse hair on Han’s chest, a sting of sweat on his mouth — _if I could, only for this night_ — matching needs combined into something whole — _hold your life inside me_ — through the long, labored dawn. Climbing and climbing inside him, hammering with every beat of pulse at sensible protection, acceptance, disillusion, unthreading the succession of months. Laid bare, no longer easy — and it took effort, it took the harsh glare of truth across his tight-locked controls to pry him open. To know he’d protected himself so he’d never have to face this, the possibility that he’d be left empty no matter how he tried. But he had to try now.

_And if we don’t make it, does it matter?_ All he could do was trust that answers would burn outward through this skin. That his hands could shape essence without knowledge, a broken language, offer what he didn’t own. Rely on the power of wanting alone.

His fingers traveled from the ridge of Han’s brow to his cheekbones, the firm angle of his jaw, lifting his face to capture this random moment against time — all the time they might not have together — and he loved Han then like he had during that moment of leaving, accepting absence like a common element between them. A twist inside, a knot pulled tight.

“Luke?” A question that mingled with his rushed breaths. A tight note in the lowered voice, almost a tremor where his thumb lay against Han’s neck.

This. Now. Acceptance that opened the moment before him, and whatever showed on his face brought a new awareness to Han’s eyes. Luke stilled his breathing.

“I want—” So simple, and yet the words didn’t feel right. He took Han by the shoulders to ease him aside. “Wait...”

He felt lightheaded when he rose from the bed and crossed for the ‘fresher. Moving through a zone that was only half real, with a strange sense of practicality. Next to the bottle of mouthwash sat a jar labeled ‘sun protection’ in Basic and half a dozen Rim dialects, courtesy of the lodge’s owner.

He returned, drawn by the incredulous look on Han’s face, like a sleepwalker, falling across him. Winded, every nerve clamoring for contact.

“I’ve never done this before, but I think we’ll need—”

“Yeah, this’ll do.” Han closed his fingers around his hand that held the jar, squeezed, so that he felt the plastic curve dig into his palm while Han kissed him. Short, breathy kisses like the stirring of words before they took shape. “Lay back...”

Han’s body molded against him, protective as if he might fall. A shiver cajoled the hand that slid up between his thighs, one finger circling, coaxing, then testing the muscle, easing past — and for a moment Luke thought about the strangeness of the situation, of wanting that burst into existence from nowhere — until the probing finger grazed a sensitive spot inside him and pressed down. He flinched, shocked by the snap of heatsparks into his groin, the white pang that tunneled up through his spine. Against his side, he felt Han smile, a chance caress fitting perfectly between his ribs.

With every slide of Han’s fingers — two now, stretching him carefully — he was riding the undercurrent that broke through him, waking dreams that had lain dormant somewhere in his body.

_In me_.

“I think I’m... ready...”

The waiting took his breath, ruptured the words — “just a moment,” Han whispered against his mouth, licking at his lips as if to draw a smile, tongue darting inside for a slow, deliberate thrust. Reaction sparked rushlights in Luke’s groin, trailing rich echoes as he watched Han’s fingers dive into the jar and stroke up and down his cock, completing his preparations. Not quite steady, perhaps more nervous than he was.

For another moment, Han knelt between his sprawled legs, claiming him with a look, his breath held so tight that every rib poked at tautened skin, stretching each second. Then Han’s palm lighted on his stomach, reaching for assurance in the lift and drop of pulse. A clumsy joy in every touch as they moved to fit together.

Anticipation flooded Luke in disjointed drifts. Knees bent, opening him while Han lowered himself, one hand gripped over his as if to keep up a familiar connection.

“Easy... Luke—”

Training and repeated exercises had taught him control over his muscles, and he tried to apply it there — but the first push drew every sensation into a different focus, a wrenching sear of resistance, his body pulling tight around the pressure against him, then inside him, the slow forward motion until something gave.

A harsh breath exploding — his own, he thought, no longer sure when a broken gasp wrung free of Han’s throat — the heated press and slide straining at final remnants of control until it pierced him with a jagged edge of pain — _so let it hurt_ — this jarring newness was a part of it that he needed, the mark of breached boundaries, of overcoming himself, sealed with the biting taste of salt and the blade of Han’s hipbone pushing against him.

_Know me_.

With a long, determined stroke, Han pressed into him, a delirious ache blending through sudden memory —

_like I’ve known you_

— of drawing Han’s lifepulse into himself, from the nerve’s limit on Nam Korlis, pain converted into trenchant light. Pain dissolved into a sheaf of sensations that had never been named, lunged into a wild thrill, and his breath rushed out in relief, in sheer incandescent gladness, as he took Han into himself and saw change grow fervent on Han’s face. Helpless fury and loss reverting to the live energy they were, released to center on him with fierce, absolute attention.

“Luke — you’re...” Faltering, between a groan and half a word. “Don’t think... I can tell you.”

He was gasping, hard and fast, through a smile out of nowhere, every sensation unfolding. Dry lemonleaf scent and boundless gray shading into potent blue, the color of silence, all of it unraveled into this joining, into reaching for more. Adrift in liquid blue, he could feel Han reach into the silence within him, sound out its depth and dimension.

Overstrung muscles relaxed, and Luke found a steadier cadence of breathing, at one with all the perceptions that fought for dominance over his senses. Swift pulse of solid flesh sheathed in him and the deep-rooted pleasure that twisted in tighter circles at the slightest motion. In Han’s sharp breath, he felt the trembling need to move, every sensation urging to take off in flight.

_Let go_. He pushed back, the surge of hips at counterpoint with the movement of his hands across Han’s chest, across the pumping heartbeat, everything in his power, the freedom he could cradle in the palm of his hand. _Come_...

His head tossed back as Han pushed deeper, setting a rhythm that drove his breaths — a deep melting heat poured into the core of him, and he grabbed on tight — until Han slumped, falling forward, one hand raked up into his hair until their foreheads leaned together. Han’s jagged shuddering gasps against his face more intimate than any other touch, the brief, savage eagerness of Han’s mouth covering his, then breaking away.

Luke let his eyes close on a twilight that filled, breath by breath, with a knowledge as pure as light. No gap between the rocking motion of Han’s hips and the fire that pierced his innermost sense like a meteorite riding out of deep space, proud and self-contained, strumming joyful shock across skin and mind. Inside one dazzling moment, he could trace out Han’s soul with his hands, in sparks and flares, in the shadowplay of muscles as Han struggled for control, and a desperate tenderness reached for him where he’d never been touched.

A jolt gripped Han’s body and raked him in long waves. Drove his hips through a tighter rhythm. Luke met him halfway, just one thought forming, that he could never again be complete without this — never so close to living as he was now, to the power that rocked Han and filled him — every ragged thrust, every groan buried inside him when Han’s mouth came down over his, both hands cupping his face. Then a sharper movement, forced by pleasure that blazed high as agony, driven into him with hard shudders. Luke arched his back, his throat tight on a cry as he took those final frantic thrusts. Liquid quivers pulsed inside him like a far echo. So full of life, it rolled over him, through him, eddies of blazing joy without source, and he was holding Han close within it.

Through a backwash of unwinding shivers, his hands cradled the heave of breaths and traced growing awareness in the tension along Han’s spine. Until Han shifted, sliding out of him and apart, his face shadowed by the fall of mussed hair.

“What’s wrong?” He found his voice, words, with an effort.

Against his neck, Han muttered something flustered that sounded like, “I couldn’t — should’ve—”

“You don’t know.” Luke reached for him, gripping for emphasis. “It was everything I wanted.” Words sinking in while his hand stroked across the tautness in Han’s shoulders.

“C’mere...”

When Han wrapped his arms around him, a small shocktide pulsed through Luke’s groin, kindling lush and electric at renewed contact. Still hard, though he hadn’t noticed until now, visceral demands seeking friction, pushing for release against the yielding plane of skin.

“Gods, you’re...” Long fingers traced his hairline, skimmed across his temple to align with his jaw, still touching with hesitation as if exploring something fragile that he couldn’t see. Startled, Luke felt a wash of Force over and around his senses, and that, too, had gone unnoticed.

“Tell me what you want.” Han’s voice was still unsteady, and rough with a very different need.

Luke smiled at him. “Just... touch me.”

It took only the gentle rocking slide between them, and a simpler pleasure spilled through his veins, shaped and released by the insistent knowledge and languid play of Han’s fingers on his cock, pressing up until a heart-pounding surge cut at his breath. Coming, claiming, lightning through him, ripping his breath away and easing him into a fast embrace.

He held on, tremors lingering everywhere in his flesh — localized swirls of exuberant energy that could burst into laughter or sobs — and he felt something similar pass through Han, tightening his chest. All around them, the saturated blue blanched towards morning with soft, fragmented sounds, muted by distance, window panes, and the cocoon formed by their ragged breathing.

“Han...” His body settled into a slaked afterglow, brimming with an unpatterned world of sensation.

“Right here.” Han’s fingers outlined his jaw, found his smile and deepened it. “Remember, on Nam Korlis,” he murmured, “I could see you, when I shouldn’t’ve been able to notice a thing.” Voice firming, a breath drawn for thought. “And back on Neotar... you warned me. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Luke paused. Right now, Han was as present within his mind as every ridge of muscle, every whisper of pulse under skin. “I wasn’t sure...”

“It works, whatever it is,” Han said huskily. “And... I can feel it now. Like you’re the air that I breathe.”

* * * * *

“It’s here.” Han stopped in his tracks and looked across a glare of sandy road at the run-down cantina. The scintillating heat ran restless energy through his nervous system. Several steps behind him in the shadowed alley, Luke had gotten mired in the sales pitch of several Talz peddlers. They’d just looked in on Artoo and Luke’s X-wing, berthed inconspicuously in a shabby docking bay.

“What’d you say?” Luke was at his shoulder now, blond hair ablaze with the suns.

Han nodded at the building across the street. “There. That’s where we met that day.”

“I remember.”

“Thought you might.” Han threw him a grin, but his amusement softened to something less definite at the absorbed look on Luke’s face. “C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.”

When they crossed over, the stagnant heat slammed into him. Down the road, sun-flares reflected off a generator dome and dissolved every outline. Long strides took Han into the watery shadow of the cantina’s entrance, sweat already trickling into his shirt collar.

He hadn’t swung by in years — not since that day, in fact — and crossing the doorstep felt like coming out of a time warp. The bar-room wasn’t half crowded, and instead of a band, an overused music reel pitted itself against the ventilator’s scratchy huff. The waft of brandroot and sweet, cloying smoke rose from several hookahs.

On his way to the bar, Han caught a glance from a patron in a corner, hazy eyes staring out grudges at the world at large. A slumped dropout contemplating the mysteries of disaster — _could be me_ , supplied a voice in his head — swaddled in self-pity and resentment. Han returned the vacant look without sympathy.

The night before, he’d been ready to fling himself down a black hole of misery, and Luke had pulled him back. No one else could have. Facts of life that he’d chosen to ignore for too long.

The barkeep shoved iced lhaji tea at them before they could issue orders. Luke cupped his hands around the glass and shot a look at the cantina’s murky rear. Lithe and alert, if deceptively quiet. No one with a functional set of survival instincts would pick a fight with him these days, Han thought. The watchful glance drifted to a table on the far side, and Han could see recollection strike home, an equivocal stirring on Luke’s face that clouded his eyes.

“This is where it all started.”

Hardly an overstatement. With minimal delay, Han felt the same tug in his gut, like gravity wavering at the start of a rollerswoop ride.

“The day I left everything behind,” Luke said. “Ben was still alive...”

Han’s hand settled over his arm, the touch gaining him a quick smile and fleeting contact with noon-warmed skin through the fabric of Luke’s sleeve. He could almost hear a different music play, the swing and the shambling beat of years ago.

And like a great, patient shadow, he could feel her too. The Falcon, purring on standby somewhere near, ready to swing him away from every slip and setback. His return ticket to a life defined by the savage speeds she made. Anchorage as well, the spaces between his own skin and hers filled out with bright, reckless plans.

“I’ve been back only once since then,” Luke said quietly.

_To peel me out of a freakin’ carbon block_. The past scaled Han’s spine with cool spiderlegs, so clear and close that he tried to lose it with a twitch of his shoulders. “And now we’re here again. Third time’s the charm.”

Sarcasm leached into his tone, and he fixed his eyes on his fogged-up glass. This was ground zero, he’d been stripped down to essentials, hitting another starting point at all the wrong angles. Their escape from Neotar still chafed at the back of his mind with the hard, cold rub of failure.

And the worst part of it — the part he would’ve fought hard to lock down and deny, years ago — was that he’d failed Luke. Luke, who’d apparently set his mind on forgiving and forgetting, no matter what. He’d grown way too used to dirty compromises.

_Yeah, face it, you’re one of them_. Han shifted his shoulders uncomfortably.

“Luke—” he started, but when smoky blue eyes met his, whatever he’d meant to say dropped abruptly from mind. Han gestured, buying himself time. “I was thinkin’ about... Chewie and Castor. They’re on their way.”

“Artoo contacted them the moment our jump coordinates came through,” Luke repeated what he’d already told him, right after their visit to the X-wing’s berth.

“Right.” Han took a long swallow of the cool tea that swirled fresh unrest through his stomach. Now, if only he could stop himself from envisioning Chewie’s reactions once he found out —

“They already know what happened,” Luke said, reading his thoughts without effort. “You don’t seriously think that Chewie’s going to care about anything except that you’re still in one piece, do you?”

His light tone struck a nerve, like he’d probably known it would.

“Nah,” Han muttered awkwardly. “Maybe he’ll pull another fangs-and-teeth number on me, but he’s got a sentimental streak as wide as Celestial Sound, and he can’t deny it.”

“Really,” Luke said dryly. The look he shot Han sparked with fond amusement and something else, like an invitation.

With a small motion, Luke eased back from the bar. Relaxed, resilient, and too damn gorgeous, like the proverbial mirage in the desert. Han reached for his lhaji tea and swallowed rapidly.

_Too good to be true_. A persistent chorus looped through the brooding storm front, the frantic disbelief that still hovered on the edges of his mind. It jangled all his warning instincts even as it wrapped him up in seductive hopes. A volatile mix that left him in a deadlock. Couldn’t trust himself to the shiny illusion of change, couldn’t help wanting it either, with a gambler’s wracking desperation.

A moment later, Luke’s hand slid across his, cooled after wrapping around the glass, and Han’s skin prickled as if from static in the air. Their eyes locked, Luke’s straightforward gaze holding him close to spellbound, and all he wanted right then was to pull Luke against him, cap all the changes they’d come through with something blunt and physical.

Wordless, Han tipped his head towards the exit, caught the mere hint of a nod from Luke at the same instant. They hadn’t finished their drinks, and the barkeep slanted them a dirty look when Han plunked some credits down in front of him.

_You ain’t got no idea, pal_. The last night was all too alive in his bones — _almost morning_ , he thought, drenched in blue, the color of Luke’s eyes — vivid recall let loose under the torrid weather.

He grabbed Luke’s hand and drew him along into the first shady corner he could locate — a deserted stall wedged in between adobe structures — slung an arm around his waist and captured his mouth in the space of one breath. No hesitation in Luke’s response, nothing but fervent compliance, like they’d been short-wired to the same impulse.

_Could take us for homeless teens_ , the thought flitted across Han’s mind. There was an awkward fervor to this that added spice to the pleasure. Supple heat moved upward through his body as Luke’s hands scaled his spine and pulled him deeper into the kiss.

Maybe the way his nerves had been scraped raw accounted for some of the intensity, but mostly it was Luke. A scalding brightness hovered in Han’s senses until it flared behind closed lids, stark as a mock-sun.

“Any more of this, and I’m gonna get dizzy,” Han murmured against parted lips. “Guess you’re better equipped to handle all the heat.”

A soft laugh brushed his mouth, all amazement and delight. “That’s what _you_ think.”

“Anything we need to do before Chewie ‘n Castor get here?”

Luke’s eyes lifted at that, settling on him with undisguised intent. “Nothing, except...”

The breathless note in his voice supplied everything Han needed to know. “Then what’re we waiting for?”

They had a few more hours, according to Artoo, before company caught up with them. By nightfall, they’d all get together and start making plans. But until then, he’d put everything else on hold, he could manage that much — easy — when desire burned off every clear thought like mere haze. Like he’d just crossed a line, into a subtle shift of dimensions.

 

Back at their lodge, air conditioning buzzed at full power. Han took a one-minute dive under the shower and found Luke waiting by the door when he turned off the tab. Too bad that the ratty plastic stall hadn’t been designed for two, but that couldn’t keep him from undressing Luke, slowly, each piece of clothing giving way to long strokes across skin that glowed hot as the twin suns under his hands.

“Better stop right there,” Luke said hoarsely when Han ran his fingers under the waistband of his briefs, “or I won’t get cleaned up at all.”

“Don’t take too long.” Throwing a pointed glance over his shoulder, Han strolled back into the room to scavenge Luke’s carryall for fresh underwear. Chewbacca would’ve packed some of his stuff on Ylab, but for the time being, he’d have to borrow Luke’s briefs.

A restless shiver passed over Han’s skin as he pulled them on. Since last night, all the searing anger had sunk to a deeper level. Maybe over time it’d morph into random energy he could use.

“You’re getting dressed again?” Luke wore nothing but a towel when he emerged from the ‘fresher in next to no time.

“Just wanted to see how they fit.” Han flopped on the bed, arranging himself into a careless sprawl. “What d’you think?”

“I think...” A smoldering glance traveled all over him, and he never got to hear the rest of it.

Within seconds, Luke was draped across him, kissing him with serious abandon. Han slid his fingers under the soft hair and savored the feel of Luke’s body pressing into him. Flowing over him in shades of pale copper and tan, tasting of the desert and baking sand. Their mouths open to each other, drawing heat with every short breath, perfectly matched in that mute, stormy exchange. Until the pleasure clenched tight, rose hard and demanding between them, and Han gave himself an overdue warning. Luke’s fingers were busy pushing the briefs down his hips, and memory of the last night’s urgency crept up inside him, preying on his control. _Not this time_.

“No need to rush this...” When he’d gulped some oxygen into his lungs, he rolled them over.

“I wasn’t—” Luke broke off, eyes sparkling with playful indulgence. “Or maybe I was.”

Han jotted a kiss against the pulse jumping beneath his jaw. “We can take our time.”

He took Luke’s face between his hands, lips making a slow path from the start of a smile to the cheekbone. Tracing a twitch of nerve in the curve beneath Luke’s eye. The flicker of lashes against his mouth light as a brush of air.

“Han...”

An affirmative got stuck in his throat, came out as a growl, his mouth drifting further to ruffle gently at an eyebrow.

“You don’t have to be... careful.”

That brought his head up. Absurd. He ran his hand down the side of Luke’s torso, across the definition of lean muscles, all the vibrant strength leashed to his control.

“This ain’t about careful, Luke.” Like a volatile compound, the giddy levity broke down into traces of confusion and a crazy, aching want that pulled tighter the closer they got. “It’s about payin’ attention to every part of you.”

His voice roughened by the pressure of things he couldn’t say. Words wouldn’t cover the half of it anyway.

The way Luke had given himself over. The way it made him feel. Almost coming unglued, first with that steep sense of failure and defeat; next with the raw need that fractured through him like he’d overlooked a crucial fault line all these years. Made him feel like a blundering amateur, too; at home with sex in great variety, but barely keeping himself afloat in deeper waters.

“Just... let me,” he added, half-breathing the words into Luke’s mouth, jilting all those half-fledged notions.

He splayed his fingers against the line of Luke’s throat and read the quick threads of excitement in every beat of blood. Spiking like signals from a distant energy source. Clumsy with words, but this he could decode blind, every intimate resonance under his touch. He could let his hands do the talking.

_Easy_. So easy, when a mere look at Luke unlocked that hollow feeling deep in his gut, his hands already half there, touch the natural connector in a living conduit. Smooth skin gliding under his palm, revealing pleasure in every stretch of muscle, every swift ripple of goosebumps, revealing Luke. Soft sounds rose unguarded into the kiss, threading past the play of tongues, a distant reverberation running along his teeth. Heart thudding against the ribcage and into Han’s fingertips when he slid them along the shallow groove of Luke’s breastbone.

He levered up on an elbow, tracing patterns with his tongue across Luke’s arched chest, provoking gasps he could taste. A first, salty shimmer of sweat teased his senses when his mouth fastened over a nipple where skin tightened, hardened on a fast rise of breath. He sucked gently, the pebbled flesh held between his teeth until Luke’s chest heaved towards him, a quiver of impatience moving through his frame. Han took a controlled breath and let rampant electricity settle into embers.

Last time had been a frantic race, glorious, edgy and heedless in the grip of something primal. Now he wanted to focus Luke on each isolate sensation. On the startled nerve that fluttered taut over his stomach, the sensitive skin around the navel. Han circled his tongue, dipping into the soft depression while his fingers kept toying with stiffened nipples, shaped a fleeting triangle that framed Luke’s fitful breaths.

When he came up for air, Luke was watching him, tracing the pathways of touch, curiosity bracing another tremor of response. A dazzling fringe of sunlight crawled across the bed at a flattened angle and made a haze of the pale hair on Luke’s thigh. Heatwave, collusion of air and light, conjuring the sheen of a hidden well. A phantom reflection in the gleam of sweat over Luke’s chest.

Han slipped a hand under the dislodged towel and lingered over the seductive contrast of textures. From damp springy curls to the fine grain of skin, silky pulse thrumming, straining into his hand. Luke moaned, the sound passing under his palm like wild current. And the sight of him scored deep in Han’s bones, deeper than pleasure, and coursed back up to strip his senses bare.

He flipped the towel aside and bent, licking slow strokes along the hard length from root to crown. Diving to taste undiluted arousal, balanced on his tongue with the quick liquid throbs that poured heat all the way down to his groin. Afloat on the tides of midday, between the writhing hips below him and the confused slide of Luke’s fingers through his hair.

From the window, a finger of fierce sunlight inched higher — a white sting against the side of his face as he held Luke deeply — while his hands roamed up the length of Luke’s thighs, from the yielding softness behind the knee to the slant of muscle-knotting tension. A gentle flush spread with the shivers his fingers sketched on their inward journey, edging forward into tantalizing body heat until he pressed past the tight entrance. Luke’s hand clutched in his hair, each moan striking hard in Han’s gut, and it grew that much harder to time his breaths.

It was the way Luke turned on like lightning, the way Luke’s reactions fired through him — even on Ylab, he’d never been like this. So entirely _there_ , committed to the crest and collapse of moments. So much trust in him.

Han lifted his head, a heady charge running free in his blood. And it was all about staking a final claim — a need to make something real within himself — subverting all his efforts to slow himself down. He breathed across the skin slope that rose towards the ribcage, watched a sharp pulse vibrate at the center. Slowly twisting his finger to stir up another gasp.

“Come on...” Luke tilted his head, indicating something on the floor. The twitch of a smile mixed awkwardly with arousal when Han angled one arm down the side of the bed and located the jar of sun lotion where it must’ve dropped this morning.

“I wasn’t about — we don’t have to—” _Damnit_. Han’s jaw clenched at this useless fumbling.

“No. I want to.” The words came clear between ragged breaths. A small frown had appeared between Luke’s brows.

Poised above him, between the pull in his groin and the limit he’d set for himself, Han struggled again for direction. A lone sun was in the window, splashing a white border across the sheet’s crinkles, and Luke’s eyes mirrored something that might not be in him anymore, perhaps never had been. Silent and insistent.

_Don’t look at me that way_.

Something twisted in Han’s chest, a blunted ache that recalled how he’d felt watching spaceships scale Corellian skies, a minor lifetime ago. Stars juggled like promises between his fingers.

Until he’d come crash-riding all the way to the ground, battered by a sharp, dry wind when he’d walked out into the desert last night. A ragged horizon of shadows ahead, and his own shadow grown thin behind him. The loss as bad as waking up blind.

“You won’t stop blaming yourself, will you?” Luke asked suddenly, a firm line at the corner of his mouth.

“Ain’t so easy,” Han muttered. “Gimme a little time...”

Time like a rift inside him, plunging straight for the root of trouble. Any longer, and Luke would see to the bottom.

“All the time you need.” Luke grasped him around the waist and pulled him flush against the length of his body. “So long as we’re together.”

The words reached him through the fast hold as if pressing through skin. Calling on the last night, the moment they’d hit rock bottom together.

“Yeah.” Not much of a voice now, more like gravel stirring out there in the wastes.

He drew Luke’s arms closer around him and lowered his mouth, brushing desert-dried lips. Easy to slip-slide back down into pleasure and to cut himself off from thinking. His body hummed electric, every nerve scrambling for instant override.

Luke broke the kiss with a gasp — “now” — head sagging back against the sheet, exposing his throat. Vulnerable in a way that lashed out at Han and clutched in his chest.

His mind shifted to the early morning hours when he’d pushed for truth like he could anchor himself in it. Needing to know that they shared something nobody else could have. _I just didn’t know who I was anymore. Couldn’t own a thing, not even a feeling_... And the sobriety in Luke’s voice had been the worst of it.

“Anything you want.”

He groped around for the small jar while Luke rolled over on his stomach. Along his backbone, muscles flared with a rough hiss of breath each time Han’s fingers slid in deep.

Han dropped a kiss against the small of his back. A faster pulse careened though him when he knelt on the mattress, settling back to draw Luke up against him, spine to chest. He bit his lip when smooth skin slid irresistably against his cock, then a billow of cooler air, and pure blinding heat next. Luke had lifted up and reached back to his hip as he centered himself. Every muscle frozen in solid control, Han’s arms locked around him with too much pressure.

He rocked up and Luke pushed down, a perfectly timed motion that drove a piercing thrill into his gut, every slow inch of advance dragging hard at his breath. A shiver passed along Luke’s back and tore loose with a sound from the back of his throat. Han leaned forward to nuzzle warm skin, nipping at Luke’s neck, the graceful line of muscle joining shoulder, and felt a subdued shudder at the slow writhe of his hips. Sliding a hand down over Luke’s belly, Han reached for his cock and touched wild, pulsing readiness, the momentum of flight.

“Like this,” he murmured, a hand curved around Luke’s jaw, turning his face so their mouths could meet. An unstable circuit completed between nerve endings and hungry silence — Luke’s tongue pushing past his teeth while his hips surged — and they found a rhythm that way, with the rise and fall of drawing each other’s breath.

Through Han’s closed lids, midday throbbed in concentric circles, the color of burning ash. He buried his mouth in Luke’s hair. All he wanted was move into the center of pleasure and let it blaze all through him. Feel Luke melt against him, surround him in ways he wouldn’t consider — a fullness of sensation that leapt from body to mind, addictive and too damn dangerous — holding the driftwood pieces of him together.

A trickle of sweat seared down the length of his back. He was watching Luke, separate from him, contained and centered deep in himself. Savage instinct pushed his hips forward and up, into a deeper thrust, and a shockpulse rolled through them both. Han gritted his teeth. Too much came unmoored, crowding his body, a desperate rush like he’d filled his lungs with unfiltered sunlight, and it rose in him, overtaking his mind with words he’d never say — _love — you_ — words he didn’t even want to hear himself thinking. Like he’d fly apart any moment.

Raw friction veered him past control when Luke’s thighs clamped around his own, his back a taut arch. One hand reached around again to grasp at a hip and urge him closer. Fast-rooted together, the sharp, inevitable rise of pleasure escalating between them with deep, grinding strokes — until Luke cried out, and his head fell back against Han’s shoulder. Rampant quivers pulled at Han, every sensation funneled down into the pulsing pressure of Luke’s climax enclosing him, the same whiteout frazzling on the nerve’s edge.

He pushed Luke forward and down into the rumpled bedding. Need pulsed through him, wrenching and accelerating. Slumped over Luke’s back, heartbeats plastered together, fighting free of constraint in staccato bursts. A blinding ache tightened in Han’s groin and wrung groans from his throat with each thrust. Out of control, his hips jerked, and the tight friction sent rapid backfire up his spine. He lunged one last time, into completion, a dizzy moment of falling and disjointed gravity, his face pressed to the back of Luke’s neck, harsh rhythm breaking around the silence that expanded his lungs — harder and harder — _stay with me_ — until it shattered with a single gasp.

The whiplash of release trailed off into small aftershocks. Han squeezed his eyes shut around a clouding sting, solid vacuum on the limit of his senses. Cast adrift on the pattern of Luke’s breathing that rose into his chest. One hand fumbling for a hold until Luke reached back, insistent with a knowledge of him that he didn’t possess, and another shudder of breath spilled free.

“Han...” Luke’s fingers gripped his with unconscious force, like he’d sooner snap bones than let go.

They rolled in a tangle, sprawled side by side in a pool of slipping noon. Coordinates stabilized slowly, silence settling around them like soft cloth.

“I don’t know how you do this...” Words riding on uneven breaths.

“What?”

So much amazement in Luke’s voice, like he really didn’t know. Han clasped the hand that rested on his chest and turned it over, his thumb stroking pulse on the inside of the wrist. Didn’t realize he’d gripped the right hand — the bionic hand — until Luke shifted, a small, aborted motion of retreat. Uncomfortable with the close attention that spoiled an illusion of wholeness.

“ _Everything_.” Han linked their fingers and raised their hands between them. “And this is part of it too. Part of you.”

Luke’s glance caught on the ball of his thumb and turned vacant as if he could see right through to circuits and microcomponents. “You don’t know...”

“What, that you got hurt?” Han inhaled deep at the bite in his voice, old anger leveled pointlessly at specters from the past. “That you lost more than just a hand? That they tried to make you into something you’re not?”

“It always reminds me.”

“Then maybe it’s going to remind you of this, too.” He pulled Luke against him, the clasped hands trapped between their chests. “What d’you think, huh?”

Luke’s fingers relaxed first, and a smile started ruefully in the corner of his mouth. “I think it might.”

The smile grew brilliant under the influence of a brief, emphatic kiss. So bright it could burn.

Han pulled away from the thought with an inward jab of irony that still served like clockwork. Any more of this, and he’d come undone into equal parts uncontrolled sentiment and alarm.

“Han, tell me...” Luke’s expression had changed at the speed of thought, grew focused, and troubled beneath that. “What do you think you should’ve done?”

He snorted. “You mean, besides the obvious? Run harder, shot faster.” Han grabbed a pillow with his free hand to prop it under his head. “Come to think of it, I should’ve shot _Jaco_ when I had the chance.”

“But instead you made him drop the remote.”

Maybe he was missing a clue here. Han shrugged.

“He tried to kill you.”

“Sure gave me a good reason to blow his lights out.” He could summon Slick’s face without effort. The smug, perma-bright smiles, fretful jealousy bobbing to the surface like so much dunked crap. But the rankling that cropped up wasn’t aimed at Jaco as a primary target.

“Thing is,” Han said slowly, “I didn’t play the part all that well. Jaco could see through my act. Probably would’ve pegged it all shortly.”

“And that bothers you?” Luke asked in the quiet, unrelenting tone he always used to home in on sore spots.

“Damn right it does!” Though he hadn’t picked up on it until now, the full blaze of anger churned precisely where he’d booked earlier failures. He released Luke’s hand and pushed his fingers into his hair, sending a galled stare up at the painted ceiling. “Couple of years ago, he never would’ve nailed me!”

“I doubt that.”

The covert amusement in Luke’s tone made it impossible to keep his annoyance intact. Han turned his head again and stabbed a finger at him. “You _always_ had delusions about me. Just ‘cause some of them happened to hit a mark accidentally...”

Then again, Luke’s smile made him think that all those bygone bruises to his ego had served a purpose after all.

“You’re still who you are,” Luke returned calmly.

Whoever that might be. Each time he tried to push the pieces into some semblance of order, it felt like sorting through a random collection of spare parts. Right now, he’d have to take Luke’s word for it.

Han raised a hand to his face, an unplanned gesture of concession that ran its own course and meant far more by the time his fingers touched the slow, steady pulse at Luke’s throat. _Just not sure if that’s who I want to be_.

He’d always thrown himself headlong into change, nudging molds into the shape that suited him and adapting to necessities without a second thought. He’d just never anticipated that that, too, could change. And if it did, that he’d be the last to know.

“I guess Jaco must’ve planned it that way all along,” Han said at length, grudgingly.

“He had backup coming to help him with the Falcon,” Luke supplied all too patent proof. “I wish I’d realized—”

“Don’t _you_ go blaming yourself now.” Han shook his head. “I thought Jaco was smarter’n that. He must be deep in shit with Gol by now.” A brief stir of satisfaction gained no purchase. “Or maybe not. That he brought the Falcon back’s gotta count for something.”

He framed a picture of her in his mind and held it there, dead center. His ship lifting off in a gush of steam and heat that still roiled like fury in his gut. “What in hell d’they want her for anyway?”

The question scooted up out of nowhere, late by two days. As if the answer was obvious, like gravity — who _wouldn’t_ want to own a ship like her? — or maybe the loss had just blinded him to all notions of the future.

“I think Gol wants her to play the part that comes with the name,” Luke suggested.

Han took several seconds to slot the cues and make the connection. “You think — that old legend?”

“Did you know about it when you won her from Lando?”

“Sure,” Han muttered, a strange chill sliding over him. “It’s popular enough on Corellia, and my grandad was always full of stories.” Full of superstition, too, that clung to his grandson where he least expected it. “Gol says he owned the Falcon at one point,” Han added. “I tried to grill him about it, but you can’t make the man talk if he doesn’t want to. Damnit, should’ve gotten it through my head that nothing’s coincidence with him!”

He shot Luke a quick glance, but there was no reproof for breaking the rule he’d just set. No brow-beating over missed chances, right. It would take some time for that to sink in, time he didn’t want to waste right now. The sun had lowered enough to drape a bright ribbon across Luke’s bare shoulder, and Han curved a hand around the warmed spot. “Let’s get back to it later, okay?”

* * *

Dusk cooled the sand-blown streets of Mos Eisley when they approached the docking bay by a circumstantial route. Chances that anyone could have trailed them verged on zero point something, but Han reckoned that some constructive paranoia was in order.

The call had come through an hour ago, soon after the freighter had swung into orbit, and relief nearly knocked him over with a spate of pent-up misgivings about Chewie and Castor’s safety. When the row of freight-ship bays loomed into view, Han quickened his pace so much he would have been running if he’d revved up any more. He was winded by the time they stopped in front of the rust-scoured portal.

With a quick breath, he turned sideways to trade a glance with Luke, and it felt like looking straight into the heart of noon, at a promise of infinite energy. Something had changed, a faint resonance hovering like broken radio waves. He gripped Luke’s hand briefly, as if it took a gesture to acknowledge what they’d had, here, before another vector change set in. Then he punched the lock release.

Before he could take another step, a russet blur barreled towards him. Inside half a second, he found himself crushed in the life-threatening bear-hug Chewbacca had withheld for so long. Wookiee fur pricked his eyes, and Han clamped down on automatic protest.

“It’s all right,” he muttered into the muffling pelt. “Just a temporary setback.”

It was one of their standing quips from years back, when they’d been belly-scraping the lower end of destitution. Chewbacca woofed softly, patting his back and ruffling his hair with the solicitude of an outsized mother-hen.

“Yeah, but we’re all alive and kicking.” Han extracted himself for a round of enthusiastic shoulder-thumping. “...and that’s something, right?”

He swiped Wookiee hairs off his shirtfront when Castor wandered up from the freighter’s aft.

“Hey!” Han clapped his shoulder for good measure and gave him a quick once-over. “You okay? How’d it go?”

“No problems,” Castor returned with one of his quirky smiles. “Chewbacca had a hunch about your mission—” and that was an understatement the size of Mos Eisley, “—so we broke camp on Ylab the day after you’d left and... stayed afloat for a while. Just in case.”

“Glad you did.” Too aware how his voice had thickened, Han cracked a tight grin — though his friends generously pretended not to notice, just stared at him like he’d risen from the dead one more time. “Guess we should sit down, compare notes, start making plans...”

“Well, come aboard.” Castor waved towards the freighter’s ramp that led straight into the cargo hold at the stern. “You’ll be happy to hear that I salvaged half your home bar’s contents.”

“Very happy,” Han acknowledged.

On the way inside, he gave Chewbacca the digest version of the Neotar foul-up — the sooner he got that out of his system, the better — and received his due earful of dismal comments, followed by another choking hug of commiseration.

The freighter’s passenger lounge was crammed with packing crates that besieged a defunct game table and worn-through seating in the corner.

“Luke’s dug up some interesting info, back on Corellia,” Han said when he dropped down on the creaky couch. “Haven’t heard all the details myself yet.”

Castor cocked an eyebrow that noted the amount of time they’d spent alone on Tatooine and busied himself pouring drinks. Chewbacca barked belligerently while he thrust his bulk into the lower end of the couch.

“Yeah, we’ll get ‘em,” Han agreed, his eyes on Luke who’d sat down between them. The greenish flicker of phosphortubes sharpened his features to an expression of leashed concern.

“All the names and references Gol has been using are connected to a set of Corellian prophecies about the end of times,” Luke started to explain. “Like the Fallow Strain. The Falcon is part of it too.”

Chewbacca roared indignantly at that until Han raised a hand. “He’s not gonna mess with her longer’n we can help it, pal.”

“It ties in with the turn of the millennium,” Luke resumed, “which, according to the old calendar, is only two weeks away. There’s a movement of believers on Corellia. They’re called the Skylar groups, and they’re preparing for the final trials and disasters. The Fraternity of the Final Advent on Nam Korlis subscribes to the same beliefs.”

Them again. Han felt his spine stiffen. “Gol pays those guys,” he said sharply. “Couldn’t make much sense of his records otherwise, but that’s a fact.”

“I’d wondered.” Luke’s mouth firmed with suspicion. “Remember the holo they used during their service?”

“Guess I should’ve listened to that preacher’s jazz, and I might’ve recognized things.”

“They’re coming to Corellia,” Luke said. “In small groups, but there’s no doubt about it.”

“What, to witness the end of times?” Castor’s expression was suspended between amusement and disbelief.

“Or to help make it happen,” Luke answered. “Civilian Intell think there might be further riots. My guess is that Gol’s doing everything in his power to turn those riots into a major scene. I’m pretty sure that not all of the new arrivals are harmless pilgrims.”

“Figures.” Han caught his bottom lip between his teeth as scraps of surmise suddenly clicked together. “His goddamn omagk game!” he blurted. “And I thought he was going to bust Nam Korlis, but the crazy bastard’s planning to take on Corellia!” He broke off to stare at the ribbed bulkhead where all the details unfolded into a panorama of covert schemes.

“Now you’ve lost me,” Castor said with mock-resignation. “What’s this game all about?”

“He showed it to me. Even explained the friggin’ gambit!” Han sagged back into the couch and stashed a throng of curses for later. “Two parties,” he went on. “Gol talked about a coalition that can be broken up. Between the forces of tradition and the intruders...”

“That means, the Corellians — and us,” Luke translated.

“He’s out to drive a wedge between Corellia and the Alliance,” Han cut to the chase, half his brain stunned by the discovery, the other half racing.

“Megalomaniac,” Castor said succinctly.

Han shook his head. “You’ve never been to Corellia.”

“And the Mon Cal delegation will be there to sign the membership treaty.” Luke’s fingers tightened on his glass. “They’ve always considered the Corellians unreliable and too combative for their liking.”

Castor’s dark eyes moved rapidly, processing information as he sipped on his drink. “You really think Gol stands a chance of pulling it off? Like, he’ll stir half Corellia into bedlam so the Mon Cal will back off—?”

“It’s possible,” Han answered. “And if _that_ should happen, you’ll see a rift as deep as the south sea open up between the Alliance and Corellia. Meaning the whole idea of a New Republic’ll go down the drain of history.” He glanced at Luke again, noting the determined set of his jaw.

Castor’s eyes narrowed. “But... how’s he going to achieve that?”

“That’s what I don’t know.” Luke twirled his glass. “I’ve read up on the prophecies, but besides shipping Fraternity members to Corellia, I can’t pinpoint his strategies. Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Well, maybe Intell’s decoded those files in the meantime,” Castor suggested. “Who knows, might be something in there that supplies the missing clues.”

Luke’s head snapped up at once, a tense line slanting between his brows. “What files?”

“I handed them over to a courier at the last rendezvous,” Castor said.

“And the courier took everything back to Commodore Teragk?”

“I should think so.”

The frown on Luke’s face told Han a compact story of doubt and speculation. “What is it? You don’t trust the guy?”

“I wasn’t notified. Teragk should’ve discussed all arrangements with me.” Luke’s gaze turned inward, locating another piece of evidence. “And at our last meeting, he seemed very intent on downplaying the dangers.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if Gol’s got him on his payroll,” Han growled, seconded by a snarl from Chewbacca.

“Good thing I kept safety copies of those files,” Castor interjected with a smirk. “If anyone’s trying to sink ‘em to the bottom of the sea, they’re in for a surprise.”

“Yeah...” Han looked down at his untouched drink, troubling the brandy’s surface as he tilted and turned the glass. Storm in a tumbler, as the saying went. Silence lay in the lounge like a sunspot on water.

“Well,” he said finally, “at least we know where we’re heading from here. Gol’s bound for Corellia, and he’ll have the Falcon in tow.”

Castor raised his glass with an ironic smile. “Corellia, here we come.”

* * * * *

They dropped from lightspeed into a silver-edged blank on the fringes of the system. A dizzy sensation teased at Han’s nerves, like the start of something had just collapsed into the end of something else. Breaking all patterns of habit, this approach was one he wanted to take at a crawl. Buy himself some breathing space to chew over history and let it vaporize by the wayside.

He toggled the freighter’s com unit in reflex, sparing attention only when the palm-sized screen spewed the same automated message he’d received before. A sidelong glance at the scopes showed Luke’s X-wing on a parallel course, come out of hyper mere seconds after them. Han keyed for a different frequency and switched to audio.

“Still can’t seem to raise Leia,” he said without preamble. “How about you?”

“All I’m getting is the standard message,” Luke replied. “Unavailable-at-this-time, and a message queue the length of my arm.”

“Is that, uh, normal?”

“She could be in a conference with Mon Mothma.”

The freighter scaled the ecliptic, and the harsh white splendor of Corel Prime broke over the viewport, fanned out for a second before it settled into a halo around the dun sphere of Corellia.

“We’ve been trying to reach her for hours,” Han returned.

“I know.” Rendered flat and dry by the tinny transmission, Luke’s voice betrayed no unease. “Castor’s here,” he added, and another green blip traced the hijacked shuttle across the scopes.

Playing deaf to sensible argument, Castor had insisted he’d get a kick out of flying a syndicate ship and turned the freighter over to Han and Chewbacca.

“This is strange,” Luke said after another moment. “I just flipped through the channels, and they’re all on overdrive.”

“And that’s hardly normal.” Han narrowed his eyes. Dead ahead, Corellia kindled with diffuse brightness reflected off its neighbor-worlds; swimming shades of blue, white and brown confined by a hairline edge of arctic brilliance. Another minute, and all the scopes overflowed with a ferocious data blitz.

“Ain’t just the com channels either.” Han flicked a glance at Chewie who punched buttons in a flurry, demanding order from disorganized readings. “Looks like there’s a whole fleet in orbit, ‘xcept that these are ships of every size—”

“They’re private vessels, cargo ships, even a couple of passenger liners, I think.”

“Guys,” Castor’s voice cut in. “What’s going on? I take it that traffic jams aren’t true to the original Corellian style?”

“Not on a scale like this,” Han answered. “Just take a look at those crummy parking orbits. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they’re handing out landing permits at the rate of personal invitations.”

Some ten minutes later, it turned out that his guess wasn’t wide off the mark. Their barrage of hails finally prompted a response which might have made sense coming from an underdeveloped backwater. Traffic control apologized for the delays while they fixed some unspecified technical problem.

Chewbacca bared his fangs and commented in his most feral bark.

“Yeah, very likely story, pal.” Han confirmed the message with a slap to the toggle. “They’ve got backup systems by the plenty.”

Then again, a serious emergency should have triggered a whole other set of security routines. He still picked through the implications when Luke signaled again.

“They’re transmitting an approach vector that will take me to a military base just outside the capital. Priority clearance.”

“Go right ahead,” Han answered. “I’ll catch you later.”

“Right. I’ll be in touch if there’s anything.”

Maybe the note of regret in Luke’s voice was one more product of fancy. His X-wing shrunk to a glint of metal that flashed from sight long before it entered the cloud-blurred atmosphere.

Left to contemplate his homeworld from orbit, Han folded his arms. Blocked out like an unwanted refugee. Really shouldn’t take this personally when a whole rout of vehicles pottered around in awkward holding patterns, but he couldn’t help it. Up and to the right, yellowed swirls in the cloud banks traced the location of the capital. Below shimmered the south sea, intense turquoise curving away into night.

No need to invite memory to come and haunt him: it sprang up anyway, alive and intact, playing itself out for a captive audience of one.

...sooty rainfalls and dust-choked summers, and always the fantasies of flying, spun from the white trail of jetflares through midday fumes and the garbled spacers’ tales that thickened like smoke in the portside bars. Streamlined shadows of an Imperial flotilla crowding the sky.

_I’ll be gone soon, you’ll see_.

_I don’t expect you to understand this now_ , the tired voice of resignation answered from a cluttered room, _but you’ll regret it_.

_Not on your life_.

And the bilious aftertaste hadn’t changed in two decades. It tightened his throat and sucked him back down into a shadowed corridor with its greasy kitchen smells, old resentment dragging at his feet. Until warning instinct burned him with a sweep of adrenaline.

At the end of that gloomy stretch, the narrow door hung askance. He crossed the rest of the distance at a run. A familiar creak gasped out of gritty hinges when he kicked the door wide open, and a streak of dissolute lighting fell across the carnage inside.

Looted and ripped apart in under twelve hours. Which was pretty much standard procedure in the poor quarters and shouldn’t surprise him one bit. Still, this was the place he’d gotten used to calling _home_.

He stopped inside the doorway, staring at a soiled jacket on the floor, and felt a last clod of solid ground fall away beneath his boots.

A gut punch of isolation had raised all his defenses, adrenaline-sharp, and some twenty years later, that main shield was still holding. _Live to regret_... He’d tried hard to skirt the most convenient traps of adulthood, never let himself be locked down by counting his losses. No regrets, no matter what.

Big surprise then, that all those early memories slammed into a giant emotional blank. Except for the bad taste of sterility at the back of his tongue. What a homecoming.

The com had been blinking for a while when Chewbacca’s rumble finally called his attention to it.

“We’re cleared for landing,” Han reported a few moments later. “Let’s put a move on before they change their minds again.”

 

What he noticed first when he set foot on the nobby tarmac was a strange, suspended twilight beyond the stratified clouds. Like an ominous shade of ash infusing the day. Everywhere around the landing field, ships’ crews and freight handlers were craning their necks at the sky. Chewie let out a series of rolling, guttural growls.

Han swung on him. “What d’you mean, all the birds are gone? What the frak’s going on?”

But the hell with it, the whole place was eerily quiet. Past Chewbacca’s shoulder, a pair of protruding eyes snaked towards him on a long, leathery neck. An Ithorian watched them with a blend of curiosity and liquid fear.

“What’s going on?” Han repeated.

The hoots and clicks that answered him came too fast to catch all the details, but the main cue registered with a chill down his spine.

“ _Eclipse_?” he echoed. “I think you got something mixed up there, pal.”

The Ithorian insisted with another drawn-out hoot, and external evidence backed his improbable story.

A great shadow had seized the sky. Han could feel it slide over him, cold and relentless. _Can’t be happening_. His mind got stuck in that groove again, incredulous alarm repeating itself with a nasty little tune that scraped all his nerves raw.

Imperial arrogance had tethered Corellia’s moon to a strictly prescribed course. No eclipse, unless it happened by their decree. But the cratered old satellite had broken loose somehow, slipped from its mooring to drench Corellia in a spiteful darkness that gripped Han from the inside out. Impossible. Mocking every single hope for a homecoming he’d never let himself indulge.

He set his jaw against the sensation of time folding over, tossing him right back into an acid concoction of loss and defeat. Beside him, Chewbacca woofed softly. Caught in the teeth of superstition and primal instincts, just like himself.

“’S gonna be over soon, you big chicken,” Han got out under his breath, and couldn’t make it sound like he believed it.

A vast quiet settled around them, and a chill slithered up his spine. He remembered watching the eclipse on Ylab, together with Luke, and it felt like a snapshot from a different life, the colors already fading. Between then and now stretched a black trench, a scar ripped across the sky. All the things that never should’ve happened — and while the moon’s shadow trailed over them, Han couldn’t shake the crazy notion that this was what he got for returning to the homeworld he’d dismissed all those years ago, like so much useless baggage. But here he was, too damn ready to break every rule he’d set for himself, with the same doggone carelessness that’d already cost him the Falcon.

On his left, the Ithorian breathed out a moist sigh. Han blinked at the cloudy sky that’d brightened again by several degrees.

“Let’s get movin’.” He cleared his throat. Maybe, if he’d had the Falcon waiting in one of the docking bays, he would’ve suggested to turn right back and blast the hell out of Corellia’s atmosphere. And maybe Chewbacca could read that in his eyes, too. Han pulled up his shoulders and let them settle again on a long, unquiet breath.

 

By the time they angled through the drifts of transients in the customs building, daylight had built back to normal levels, and so had the general noise. A shout arrested them halfway across the crowded lobby.

Han ground to a halt as if a gun muzzle had been poked between his shoulder blades. Clearly overreacting to the off-chance of running into someone he knew.

“I don’t believe this.” Fazed to the point of shock, Lando pushed towards them. “You... goddamn... scoundrel.”

A weak echo of earlier reunions, abrupt pauses cutting into the words. Han mustered a final reserve of nonchalance to ease the moment. “Charming as usual. How’s business, buddy?”

Lando shook his head, refusing to be goaded. “All that time, and suddenly you show up again like—”

“Yeah, yeah, now stash it, will ya?” Han broke in, too edgy to hold his temper. “Just tell me why port control freaked ‘n left us to kick up our heels in orbit.”

“The eclipse, what else!” Lando’s sour look promised a rehash at the first opportunity. “When they realized what’d happened to the moon, they put all traffic on hold. They ran out of parking space around the government facilities too, or I wouldn’t even be here. At least I’ve commandeered a glider.” The start of a reluctant grin crept past his guard. “You’re in luck, buddy. Want a ride to the city center? Unless you were planning to keep a low profile...”

Han ignored the sarcastic bite. “Not this time. Sounds like we’re heading in the same direction.”

Within a minute, they were racing past fractured sights that pulled together and shattered again when Lando turned another corner. Flashes of haphazard geometry begged recognition, though memory tricked Han with hazy shapes and shadows. He closed his eyes before everything could go into a spin.

_Like any other place_ , he told himself. There was nothing here that remembered him, only illusions, nothing but hokey sentimental notions about coming home. And crowds everywhere on the walkways. Most of them already breaking up, shuffling apart into idle groups, to pitch rumors against a grating backdrop of claxons and amplified horns. With intermittent mutters into the comlink, Lando added his share to the noise. The glider swooped and heeled to a stop.

Han pushed upright in his seat and looked at glazed angles of unrevealing architecture. “Where are we?”

“Sweet suns, where’ve _you_ been?” Lando’s mocking grin offered a welcome distraction. “I talked to Leia just now. Seems like she was expecting you.”

“Luke’s with her?” Han shoved the passenger door open.

“And here I thought I could surprise everyone, dragging you in by the collar.” Lando smacked his shoulder. “You owe me a long story and several drinks. Later.”

“Much later,” Han agreed.

They climbed broad stairs into a building he’d never entered in his life, passed a worried-looking throng of junior officers, and ascended to a gallery that ran the length of the main hall. Functionaries and security thronged in tight circles, surrounded by the crackles of busy comlinks. On the far side, a sweeping balcony opened up a view across the city.

“Where—?” Han started.

“Han!” Leia whirled towards him, and if she’d stocked up irritation at his long disappearance, relief outblazed it for the time being. Her slim body pressed against him, and a precious fragrance enveloped him, baiting the ghosts of old regret.

He hugged back, caught out by a muddle of gratitude and relief.

“It’s been a long time, flyboy.” Behind the wry smile, Leia’s eyes shimmered dangerously — and simultaneously warned him not to make mention of it. “Good that you’re back. And not a day too soon either.”

“Good to see you too,” he muttered, his hand already lifting to smooth a stray curl back over her ear. The past catching up before he could stop himself, catching him unprepared with a fondness that’d grown on him long before their ill-fated detour into romance.

Leia gave him a soft, quizzical look. With an awkward moment’s delay, Han let his hand drop, and his glance cut past her shoulder. Straight at Luke who stood apart.

His hair a little wild, he looked young and out of place, unassuming in his tan clothes. And like so many times before, he’d taken himself out of range. With a start of frustration, Han wanted to snap him out of that habit. Right now, preferably. Especially now.

No chance, of course. They’d already drawn a surreptitious audience. Uncomfortable again, he took Leia’s elbow and steered her to the balcony’s carved railing. Caught hold of a sleeve to motion Luke along.

“What’s all the ruckus about?” He gestured inclusively. “I mean, what is this, an eclipse happens and everybody just goes nuts?”

Leia’s smile drained away fast, long-term pressure written all over her. “I’m surprised you should ask.” She lowered her voice and glanced out across the deranged air traffic. “It’s part of the prophecies, and we were told that the odds for a total eclipse in this region are so slim, even Threepio would have trouble calculating them.”

“Yeah, I _know_ that. So?”

Chewbacca grumbled softly from the post he’d assumed at Han’s shoulder, a live screen shielding them from view. Lando hung back half a step, clearly broadcasting his intent not to budge any further.

“It started several hours ago, far in the north, and swept all the way to the capital,” Leia explained. “People stopped working to watch it, or rushed home to their families. There were accidents, power failures, cases of looting...” A dismal shrug supplied the rest.

“If Corellians weren’t so miserably stubborn about using droids, things would never’ve gotten out of hand,” Lando inserted as if she’d been talking to him.

“Intell told us to expect a terrorist strike,” Leia concluded, “as if a chain reaction into outright chaos wasn’t bad enough. And if this is a foretaste of the anarchy we’ll see during the alignment, we might as well cancel all our plans.”

Han made an attempt to backtrack before they got mired in sordid predictions of every kind. “Somebody must’ve altered the moon’s course. How in blazes did that happen?”

“I can’t tell you yet,” Leia said acridly. “The security teams we’ve sent up to investigate are bound to document sabotage of some kind, but that won’t change the impact this whole thing has already made.”

On her other side, Luke watched over the cityscape as if major trouble could manifest again any moment. “Everyone saw the eclipse. That means the prophecy was fulfilled.”

“A _portent_ , yes.” Leia’s mouth curled in disgust.

Han folded his arms, an impotent gesture of defiance that he couldn’t stop. “And we all know who’s behind this freak show.”

“Well, I don’t,” Lando muttered peevishly in the background, but they ignored him.

“Even if we published unquestionable evidence of sabotage,” Leia went on, “those who _want_ to believe that the world’s end is near will call it government obfuscation.” She bent a searching look on Han as if to make sure he saw the point.

“There’s more,” he guessed.

“There always is." A faint note of sarcasm wrapped around her impartial tones. “Two days ago, a Sullustian trade outpost was attacked by the syndicate. The Ruling Heir found he could not tolerate yet another affront and ordered a segment of the fleet into the Iridys sector. Not that they’re going to achieve anything, of course.” Leia paused, fully prepared for his half-hearted curse. “Mon Mothma has been in a meeting with the Sullustian ambassadors since the start of this crisis, but it will take more than protest and promises this time.”

“It takes cutting the problem at the root.” Han cursed again, in silence, while his mind presented him with a taunting snapshot. Gol hunched over his game board where the brown and white pieces sat like cheerful dummies. Always a step ahead of them. Past time they broke that pattern.

“Let me check with Castor,” he added. “As soon as he’s docked somewhere, we’ll get the files I pulled out of Gol’s databanks—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Leia interrupted. “Commodore Teragk informed me this morning that they’ve been successfully decoded.” But she caught on fast, eyebrows climbing in suspicion before Han could get another word in. “You don’t trust Teragk’s people?”

“More the man himself that we don’t trust.” He nodded in Luke’s direction. “I’d much prefer if Rieekan’s slicers took a look at those files.”

“That can be arranged,” Leia said, with deliberation. A third degree had just been put off, not canceled altogether. “And I suppose this assignment should take top priority.”

“It should,” Luke agreed.

She glanced back and forth between them, suddenly alert to missing time and overdue explanations. At their backs, busy steps rang across the gallery. The nervous crowds regrouped, retreating into the safe order of business. “I’m sorry, but I must go and see Mon Mothma now.”

“Sure.” Han hoped his relief didn’t transmit on every frequency when he added, “The big debriefing can wait ‘til tomorrow.”

Leia’s hand captured his arm again right when everyone else turned to leave, restraining him with barefaced concern. “What’s with you? You look—”

“I’m okay,” Han stopped her. From the corner of his eye, he saw their friends slink out of earshot, yielding space for privacy — or perhaps anticipating a flare-up of old arguments. Outlived patterns resuming like he’d never left at all.

“Don’t think we’ve got time for all that now, Leia.” He touched her hand briefly to soften the brunt of his words. “I’ll see you later.”

* * *

People stared at him. And most of them didn’t even make a token effort to cover up; just ogled like they had every right. Some five hundred meters into the old market district, Han questioned his misbegotten impulse to take a hike down memory lane. He’d had his fill of overnight fame after the battle of Endor, keeping it at arm’s length with massive doses of irony that made it tolerable. But back then, he’d been just one more cipher in a whole bunch of Alliance heroes, no match for Leia’s glamor or Luke’s mystery. Here, everyone’s attention singled him out like he’d had a target painted squarely between his eyes.

When they entered a suitably dim bar, too many vacant glances shifted his way and filled with interest. Han felt strangely naked, without the Falcon waiting for him somewhere. Like every pretense he’d ever used had been suddenly stripped away. He throttled an impulse that sent his hand straight towards his blaster.

“Relax,” Lando said under his breath, with too much glee for Han’s liking. “Everyone’s your friend here.”

“Shut up,” Han growled. “Can’t remember inviting _you_ along anyway.” He zeroed in on an empty booth and flopped down on the bench next to Luke.

“I’ll get the drinks,” Lando offered jovially, “but _you’re_ paying.” With a dubious look at the minimal bench space Chewie’s bulk left for him, he ambled off towards the bar.

“Anybody spot the back door from here?” Han muttered.

Luke smiled only for his benefit, subdued tension hovering right behind. “I thought you had them all mapped years ago.”

Han reached for a flip reply that wouldn’t come and relented with a shrug. Whatever the reverse of coming home felt like, the discomfort that crawled all over him had to be a close match. Like his skin had shrunk, and everybody was just waiting for the first cracks to show.

Then Lando returned with an armful of froth-topped glasses, and for the next half hour, Han divided his attention between the full-bodied taste of spiced ale and cutting a long story short. Thanks to his fine-tuned diplomatic instincts, Lando kept the quizzing to a minimum until Han squeezed the Neotar flunk into a couple of bare-boned statements.

“You — _what_?”

“I said I lost the Falcon.” Han glared across the table.

“I heard you the first time.” Lando glared right back, the proprietary impulse a decade past its prime. “I just can’t believe—”

“Lando.” Luke’s tone could have cut ice, the perfect equivalent of Chewbacca’s toothy bristle.

“I turned my back at the wrong moment. My fault, all right?” Detachment settled over Han like he’d just bartered a final scrap of privacy away, a weight drained from him to be replaced with nothing of essence.

“Just do me a favor ‘n don’t say you’re sorry,” he added.

Lando’s glance dropped to his emptied glass while he grumbled something that wasn’t meant to be intellegible.

At that strategic moment, the holo projection in the corner switched from corny entertainment programs to a sparkling newsflash. The eclipse made the headlines in full color, trailing spontaneous riots all across the north country. Without the slightest hope of success, local security forces were chasing after merry bands of scavengers, and the Skylars were having a party. The newscaster quoted one of their preachers like a serious source of wisdom. Lando rolled his eyes.

“End of the world! I just don’t get it how so many practical-minded people can suddenly buy into this nonsense.”

“They can _make_ it happen,” Luke countered. “That’s what we need to keep in mind.”

Han could feel his quiet intake of breath and his body warmth and it wasn’t close enough. One moment he was watching the holocam inspect a looted garage, and the next he stared down the tunnel-stretch of a murky corridor. A jimmied door falling open into shadows. Precarious tectonics, tilted like the plates of reality had just shifted by an increment or two. Absently, he noticed that his hand wasn’t quite steady when he raised his glass to drink up.

“We should go,” Luke said.

Han could feel his glance without turning and couldn’t agree more. Whereto, was the real question. Between the patrons’ stares and the reek of lives sold up for cheap hopes, Corellia didn’t leave him enough space to breathe.

_I never should’ve come back_ , he thought what he couldn’t tell Luke, and set his glass down hard.

* * *

“You live _here_?” Unassuming wasn’t the first word that leapt to Han’s mind when he swept a glance around Luke’s apartment. More like, self-effacing. Or self-oblivious. Bare walls, insubstantial furniture designed to leave no impression at all, and around the windows, uneven plaster braids had cracked with the heat.

“I wouldn’t call it living exactly.”

“Me neither,” Han said dryly, and got a tight smile in return.

“You know what I mean. For the longest time, I had no need for a place of my own.” Luke regarded the scratch-proof desk like he’d only just discovered its existence. A message light beamed back at them from the com unit.

“It’s Castor,” Luke reported as soon as the screen lit up and letters poured forth. “ _I’ll keep an eye on General Rieekan’s staff while they’re cracking those files_ ,” he read out loud. “ _Maybe I can learn something useful. You two get some sleep. See you in the morning_.”

Han took off his jacket and dropped it across a molded duraplast chair. His inner chrono said noon, the Corellian rhythms of day and night long faded from instinct. But even without the friction of discrepant cycles, sleep would have been out of reach. In the background, a veteran ventilator creaked, struggling to suck the day’s warmth from the air.

“We could go up to the roof,” Luke suggested, and his thoughtful expression warned Han that he’d been under observation for a while. “Here, let’s take a couple of blankets. I spend a lot of time up there.”

 

Night settled around the distant rhythm of the sea; the slow, battering slosh of water against permacrete an unvaried backbeat to every memory. Around it, the capital dissolved into a kaleidoscope of mobile and stationary lights. Like any other nocturnal city.

“How do you feel?” Luke had moved up beside him, sharing the view.

“Strange. Like... nothing really fits anymore.” Han shifted his weight to the other foot. “Ever had that kind of dream where you can find your way around a place blind, but at the same time you know you’ve never been there before?”

“I think so.”

“This is like the reverse.” Han pulled his boots off and flopped down on the blanket, avoiding to look at the sky just yet. “It’s like any other place, if you count out the way people look at me... like I should recognize them.”

When Luke settled beside him, Han wrapped an arm around his shoulders and tugged until Luke relaxed, leaning some of his weight into him. Sharing the one private space he’d claimed for himself, the bald rooftop like a raft in the night.

Han turned his face and let the breeze blow some blond strands against his mouth, mingling with tart scents from the harbor.

“What about your family?” Something in Luke’s tone suggested a long lead-in to the question, paved with guesswork and consideration.

“There’s no one left.” And maybe he should leave it at that. Draw out the pause a few seconds longer, until Luke filed further inquiry away as off-limits. Han rubbed his cheek against Luke’s hair and felt the ground sway just a little.

“I grew up with my mother and my grandad. Her father.” Twenty years worth of silence suddenly scraped in his throat. “Out there in the quarter just beyond the docks. ‘S all gone by now...”

Residential blocks aligned with merciless precision, all of them strictly bottom rung. Identical ground plans raised to twenty-seven rotting levels, and on each level, matching cell doors faced off across a long corridor with its endless track of biting smells. From piss to burnt grease to spilled brandwater, a joint mutiny against the whiff of disinfecttants. All of it flattened into the ground to become the rubble on which they’d built the trade union headquarters under Imperial rule.

Luke sat forward, making room for the memory, arms crossed over his knees.

“They moved down here from the north when I was five years old.” Han ran his hand down the straight spine and let it drop soft as regret into the blanket’s folds. “Ma used to work the petrolite trails across the northern bayous ‘til they shut down the drill stations, and all those outdated freighter barges got scrapped. I still recall riding along though. Just barely...”

A razor-ring of blue horizons, and the shadow of the barge churning white in the water below. The sluggish movement of hours into days.

“She never liked the city,” he went on. “I did. Spent as much time in the streets as possible. She used to say I had it from grandad — the restlessness. And taking risks, I guess.”

He could hear the ragged echoes of what he hadn’t said, but Luke didn’t ask any more questions. Either filled the gaps with intuition or accepted them as given.

“Grandad went north to rejoin the brigades when the Empire brought out the big guns,” Han said. “He’d been a member of the pack from the day he could handle a blaster. I must’ve been twelve years old.”

A flitter passed low overhead, its engine clipping his last words. White headlights chased a trembling pattern across the wall on their right and showed Luke’s frown in quicksilver.

“The brigades?” he asked. “I thought they were formed to stop a complete Imperial takeover.”

Han snorted. “That’s the front office story. The brigades go back a long way, longer’n the legit military, and it’s always made the government nervous that there’s an underground army operating without bells ‘n blessings. For all I know, the brigades still exist.” He chanced a look at the sky, the dim shore of stars above the nearer city lights. “Anyway, grandad went back to being a logistics officer in a shadow army, and Ma worried that I’d run right off in his footsteps.”

Mangled communication lines, he thought now, and he’d cut them like the rest of the ties that held him down. Precocious and goddamn cocksure about the greater meaning of life.

“But you didn’t.”

“He died before that was a realistic option,” Han cut the story short, before too much of his mind could tilt any deeper into the past. “Besides, all I really wanted was to ship out on the first starbound junker and become a pilot. Well, you know _that_ feeling.”

“And I almost ended up in the Imperial Academy, just like you did.” Luke’s casual tone sealed off the sympathy he couldn’t accept.

“Yeah... much later.” Han raised a hand, outlining Luke’s shoulder with a quizzical touch. “I hitched the first ride off-planet before I’d turned fifteen. All the time I’ve spent here since then doesn’t come up to more’n a month, I think.”

Simple. Facts and statistics that tallied where his inner guidance systems had gone totally out of sync.

“Not much,” Luke said softly.

His hand reached up to cover Han’s, and Han gripped back with a fierce, treacherous instinct for anchorage. Back on Ylab, he’d still known the shape of the life he called his own, all tomorrows tethered to the Falcon’s presence. And he’d tricked himself thinking he’d already paid the price for his freedom. Another delusion that’d left him hollow to the bone.

“Not much left to come home to either,” he said. Even less than he’d expected, all the flashbacks striking at odd angles. Han pulled his hand away with a shrug. “No reason to get all maudlin about it. It’s still good seeing some people again. Even Lando.”

“And Leia.”

It came out too fast and gave him a direct line on Luke’s thoughts.

“Me ‘n Leia,” Han said slowly, “that’s ancient history.”

Luke’s jaw worked at a question he resented but couldn’t avoid. “Are you sure?”

Another flitter swerved by, its headlights bright on his lids, and he glanced down, concealing his eyes from the glare. Not fast enough. The vulnerable moment before control set in betrayed exactly how much Luke could be hurt.

Another calamity, courtesy of Han Solo. He’d let this thing grow too far, and he’d strung himself along, based on nothing but a shaky hope for second chances.

“Yeah,” Han said roughly, wishing he’d looked aside, wishing to hell he could stick with comfortable half-truths and ignorance. “’Course I’m sure, and I was sure a long time before I packed up ‘n left.”

“Was there a time,” Luke asked haltingly, “when you thought it would last?”

_In all honesty? No_.

Han delayed his answer and fingered the kind of truth that came in a clean-angled package, too transparent for comfort. After the first rounds of challenge and retreat and explosive collisions, Leia had leveled out and went back to being her efficient, sensible self. Lover or Rebel leader, she was always focused and clear about her choices. Nothing changed her. And once he’d pushed past the dragging aftereffects of having six months carbon-chilled from his life, he’d admitted — if only to himself — that he was wrong. Wrong to feel disappointed, almost cheated, when Leia offered him a place at her side, with all the candor and generosity he could have wished for. A well-structured partnership based on mutual effort, and it felt like a painted trap.

“We could never really connect,” he said. “We were fine so long’s the war kept us busy, but after that... Too many compromises, that’s what it all came down to. You know her. One of us would’ve had to go through a personality refit to make it work.”

“I’m sorry.”

Maybe that referred to raising the question in the first place. More likely, it referred to Leia and him. Only Luke could move past his own hopes and wishes in a heartbeat, for the sake of everyone else’s comfort.

_But this is different_ , Han almost blurted. _You are_.

Where the facets of Leia’s personality came together in a balanced, shining whole, Luke had never outgrown the jagged cliffs and steep drops of emotion. The capacity to be startled, overwhelmed, to look down into the pitfalls between trusted convictions instead of welding them shut. The readiness to be hurt, no matter how carefully he guarded himself.

“What you said on Tatooine,” Luke started, “that you couldn’t get through to me anymore. That’s not how I remember it.”

“I guess I just... wanted things to be more like they’d been before.” _More of everything_. Han laid his fingers against the hollow of Luke’s throat, stopping where he ran out of words and sensation took up. The rough slide of his callused fingers across smooth skin, the swift response in Luke’s pulse.

Hell, _different_ couldn’t begin to describe it. Something in him ignited too hard and fast, made him want, more than anything, to stay safe within this unstable zone. Belong with Luke just as Luke belonged with him — but that thought was like an armed detonator, brimming with trackless energy and potential damage.

_Nothing much left that I can give you_. Only the raw feeling that he couldn’t trust, primed to crash and burn.

Han glanced back at the dark stairwell and imagined the bleak rooms below, the neutrally furnished emptiness that cast everything into sharp, unsparing relief. The loneliness Luke inhabited like a second skin, and the reason why he was here tonight.

No coincidence. The explanation he’d applied before — that Luke had reached out to him just because he was there, because they shared a history of trust between them like a security net — wasn’t working anymore. Han leaned over and kissed him, offering what was needed right away. All the wrangling with truth and responsibility would come later.

Luke’s mouth opened to him with a soft, hungry sound, and gentle contact turned into something deep and electric. It lasted much longer than Han could hold his breath. They dropped back on the blanket, thoroughly entangled, no longer holding anything back. Han pressed his palm flat against the heartbeat that hammered at Luke’s ribs and murmured, “You need so much.”

Startled, as if caught at an embarrassing secret, Luke’s eyes flew open. “I don’t—”

Han shook his head — _that’s not how I mean it_ — and channeled it all into the next kiss. Wanting to go the limit was what made up Luke’s real strength, though it scared the living hell out of Han. _What I could do_. Accidents just waiting to happen, and nobody but himself to blame.

He pushed the knowledge aside before it could break the surface and draw cutting lines between today and tomorrow. One thing at a time. What they both needed now, he could do easy. Mold his hands to the fine shadows that fell across Luke’s jaw, the side of his throat, taste the bright essence of his skin. Love him long and slow and hard until they got lost in the rise of pleasure that matched them perfectly and left them boneless.

Later, he lay wide awake on his back and reached up to capture a star in the rough circle formed by his thumb and index finger. Imagined the Falcon swimming through that minimal space. He looked up at his boyhood sky, while Luke’s hand on his chest sank and lifted and fell with every breath. Thoughts running dark and silent below the ebb of sensation, too jumbled to catch. Except —

_Live to regret_.   
_Not on your life_.

Luke’s body warmth wrapped around him, and he hurt, he burned, he thrummed with a helpless anger that had nowhere to go. Trailing a slow erosion of conscience down into strung-out sleep.

* * * * *

“I’m so sorry.” Leia leaned her chin on folded hands and cut a look at the wall that sought out private memories. “I could tell something was troubling you both yesterday, but of course I didn’t realize... How does Han handle it?”

How to answer that? Luke stepped away from his accustomed place by the window and rounded her desk. “You know him. He won’t let it go, and he’s not giving in. He’s determined to get her back, no matter what.”

An isolate segment broken out of a complex truth, falling short of comfort. When he thought of the last night, everything reflected back and forth between opposite, interlocking states. Han’s tenacious silence breaking open into passion, banked tension unraveled into confusion and arrested again when he laid out his memories like withered, impersonal facts. His hands as restless as his mind, shifting with the sea-breeze and the patterns of distant light.

Luke turned aside, immense warmth flooding him from a place beyond reason, at odds with unfocused doubts. Whatever tore at Han ran deeper than the loss of the Falcon.

“Well,” Leia said, releasing unspoken regret with a long breath. “I suppose that means his motivation to beat Gol is every bit as strong as ours.”

“His motivation?” Luke echoed, snapped from thought straight into protest. “Don’t you think he’s done enough to prove—”

“Luke,” she stopped him, “that’s not what I said. I’m not about to question his reasons, but I won’t delude myself thinking that he’s doing it for the New Republic. His reasons have always been personal. It was exactly the same when he joined the Rebellion. That much hasn’t changed.” Leia tucked a thin brown strand behind her ear and cocked her head for a sharp scrutiny. “You’ve grown very protective of him, you know.”

Her words carried a sting that couldn’t have been intentional. “That’s nothing entirely new,” Luke returned stiffly. “And I think I still know the limit.”

“He’s going to leave again.” Leia glanced down into the paperwork on her desk and might have been talking to herself, but those dry words landed hard. As if they’d been plucked from the taut stillness within him, bending every feeling until it was wound up tight. A thought Luke hadn’t allowed himself. Wouldn’t contemplate now.

He commanded himself back to business and into a chair. “We’ve got a long way to go before that becomes an issue.”

“True.” Leia sighed and fished for a sheet filled to overflow with scribbled notes. “I’ve read as much as I could of the files you left me, but I’m not sure they’ll give us any further clues to Gol’s plans. For one, the Fallow Strain...”

“Yes.” Luke leaned forward to glance across her elegant handwriting. “There was an epidemic of that name.”

“Medical technologies weren’t what they are today,” Leia explained, “and almost eighty percent of the patients died. However, it seems that the Corellian metabolism adapted to the virus. Within a decade, the mortality rate dwindled to become insignificant, and no recurrence has been reported for the past hundred and twenty years.”

“Meaning Corellians are immune to it?”

“Exactly.” Leia paused to smile encouragement at him. “That’s good news, and even if the disease were to resurface, an antidote would be easily available for everyone who isn’t immune. Gol must be aware of that.”

“I suppose so.”

“But you’re not convinced that we’ve run into a dead end here?” Leia watched him a moment longer before she added, “That reference to the Fallow Strain could have been intended to mislead us.”

Luke nodded shortly, unable to pinpoint the unease that resisted rational argument. He thought about Gol’s omagk game, the hints he’d dropped in plain sight without giving anything away. “Possible... but there might be a twist to it that we still don’t see. What about the eclipse? That wasn’t supposed to happen either.”

“At least we’ll find out how it happened shortly. Rieekan should have the report by now.” Leia turned the sheet over, her eyes shifting hurriedly across the trailing shorthand. “It’s fascinating,” she murmured, “how much time and effort went into creating images for the termination of everything known. Did you realize that there are hundreds of Fall Cycles all over the continent?”

“I’ve only looked at about ten.”

“The variety is amazing.” Leia glanced at the lightless datascreen, then back at him, hands settling above her notes. “But I have no way of knowing which of these images mean anything to Gol.”

_The Falcon drowning beneath the waves_ , Luke thought incongruously — a roar in his ears, out of silence, like the deafening clash of water overhead — it flashed, faded, and was gone again in another second.

“There’s one feature that stands out though,” Leia continued. “In some of the cycles, the gods’ messengers were replaced by Jedi and Sith. At least that’s who I take them to be.”

A tap to the keypad activated the screen, and a ream of digitized paintings reeled by, flaking pigments and ribbed hardwood like the delicate skin of the past.

“Here...”

A shadowed silhouette, green blade raised in a perpendicular salute, splitting the figure in symmetrical halves.

“And here.”

A furious crimson arc swung out at a multiple-headed creature covered in scales. Long robes drawn with minute attention to the detail of movement.

“Yes,” Luke said, “the restorator I talked to mentioned that the cycles were modified over time. It makes sense that the Jedi would be incorporated too.”

“Still...” The screen dimmed in time with the frown that appeared between Leia’s brows. “You don’t suppose this could be about Force users in particular?”

“Going by the things Han told me, it’s about intruders in general... and that means all of us. Gol seems to believe that he’ll liberate Corellia.”

“From every foreign influence?” Leia’s mouth twitched impatiently. “These people have been traders and explorers longer than anyone remembers. Does he truly believe they’ll appreciate his interference?”

“Maybe it’s meant as a strike against centralized administration,” Luke suggested. “There’d be a lot of support for that idea.”

“Yes, unfortunately.” With a short, indignant shrug, Leia shut down her desk console. “It seems as if studying these images won’t take us anywhere without further information. They just made me wonder...” Pragmatism intervened before she could stray into speculation.

“About what?” Luke asked, reading the sudden ambivalence in her expression.

“It’s odd.” She rested her face in one hand. “I was brought up to believe in the Force and the Jedi knighthood, but I never understood why anyone should be afraid of them, or the Force itself. I thought of it as a tool, and if the right people used it after being properly trained, there was nothing to worry about.”

“And now you worry.” No need to make it a question.

“These pictures make them look like demons.” Leia’s eyes wandered to a more neutral sight, fixing the wall over Luke’s shoulder. “I could suddenly see why, now that I’ve felt the Force myself. It’s tempting.” She straightened and clasped her hands together, reaching for resolve. “The ability to read and manipulate minds — how could that not be tempting for someone who’s sat through endless Senate debates and rambling negotiations while there were civil wars and senseless destruction to be stopped? Maybe you shouldn’t teach me that much.”

“It’s up to you,” Luke said, carefully neutral.

“But how do you deal with that much power?” The comlink’s whistle cut across her last words as if in ironic emphasis. Leia sighed. “Well. That’s a topic for another day.” She raised an eyebrow at the code that showed up on the com screen and touched a button. “Sooner than I thought.”

“I heard that, Your Worship,” Han’s voice rejoined from the speaker. “Matter of fact, Rieekan’s slicers’ve been working overtime. We’ve compared their transcripts with Teragk’s version, and it’s given us more than enough to nail him.”

“We’re on our way,” Leia said crisply.

“So’s the commodore,” Han returned. “He’s got a lot of explaining to do.”

“I’ll bring the thumb-screws.”

The comlink clicked off on the sound of Han’s throaty chuckle.

Luke caught himself smiling, a tingle from the last night scooting over his skin. Electrified by the mere sound of Han’s voice, and taking too much pleasure from it — but for the moment, he didn’t care.

* * *

Han’s amusement had evaporated in a slow burn by the time Commodore Teragk started to sweat. Like a refracted simmer of light, Luke could feel his anger charge the room.

“C’mon, admit it, you knew it was me,” Han challenged. “You set things up so that Luke’d talk me into working for Gol!” He circled the chair on which Teragk sat as if chained to it, his back rigid like the polished wood. “Who knows, maybe you thought you were doin’ me a favor. Step up my dirty little career in the smuggling business. I should be saying thanks, huh?”

His sarcasm fetched a glint of hostility to Teragk’s eyes. “You chose that life for yourself.”

“Yeah, right, and that made me perfect for the job.” Two long strides, then Han stopped pacing and faced him from the darker side of the room. “You’d better spill fast. You’re right about one thing, I won’t bother going through the legal channels to get what I want, and I’ll sure as hell get _you_ for this.”

From the corner of his eye, Luke saw General Rieekan tense up and relax again by degrees, taking the threat for strategy, which it wasn’t.

“The manipulated files came from your office,” Leia said icily. “How do you explain that?”

“Equipment malfunction. Unless someone among my staff deleted the missing parts either by accident or on purpose.” The commodore presented his most wooden bureaucratic face. “I shall conduct a thorough investigation, of course, to determine exactly what happened.”

“Yeah, and I’m sayin’ let’s start the investigation right at the top.” Han crossed his arms. “I’ll believe a lot about droids ‘n digital brains, but they don’t erase data out of spite.”

“Commodore,” Rieekan started, patently appealing to military decorum. “You’re aware of our most precarious situation. Perhaps you believe to serve Corellia, but the crisis we’re facing can affect your homeworld just as much as it does the New Republic.”

“Are you suggesting that I’m in league with a bunch of paranoid sectarians?” Teragk’s defiance had a rise to it that made Luke wonder. An unsteady edge of emotion.

“We’re suggesting,” Leia retorted, “that there are serious concerns about your loyalty. Whose interests do you serve?”

As he watched, Luke traced the ferment beneath Teragk’s aggressive poise. Exposed in a spill of focused light, sweat glittered along his jaw like a track of fear.

“What is Gol using against you?” Luke asked. “What are you afraid of?”

Brown eyes swung towards him, gauged him with the sharpness of survival instinct. If he stretched further, he’d slide beneath screens of defiance to touch sentiments that shaped the man’s motives. And right now, that was what Teragk feared the most. The man’s suspicions wrapped around him like a sticky substance.

“I’m not going to invade your mind,” Luke said, extending candor like a shield. Even if it defeated their purpose. “What is it that you’re protecting?”

Peripherally, he sensed Han’s attention, a thread of troublement laced through his anger.

“Who,” Teragk said hoarsely. “It’s who I’m protecting.”

Several minutes later, they were all watching a quarter-sized holo unfold itself in sapped electric green. The projection framed gloved hands that pulled razorwire taut against a slim throat. The girl’s face was pale, her eyes half-closed, trapping every reaction. Her voice just above a breath. “ _Father_...”

The chill that hunted over Luke’s back claimed a distorted kinship with the past.

“Taleen,” the commodore named her. “She was kidnapped during a visit — since my wife died, she’s the only—”

He clamped down on the words just before his voice could crack from strain. In the half-lit room, anger and sympathy mixed thickly.

“You’d better tell us what you know, Commodore,” Leia said at length, the sorrow in her tone at once genuine and deliberate. “I don’t think you can rely on Gol to keep his promises, whatever they were.”

Teragk leaned back from the projector and confronted them with a look of hopeless honesty. “You’ll be disappointed.”

 

Noon slatted through the blinds in white ribbons when security escorted Teragk from General Rieekan’s office.

“Not much,” Leia said concisely. “But I suppose it was too much to hope that Gol would have apprised him of his ultimate plans.”

“It’s enough if we play it right.” Han tilted his chair back, full of bristling energy in search of a target. “He’s got a password that will get us the Mantura’s proper coordinates.”

_Mantura_. The name dropped into Luke’s mind like a piece of shrapnel. _Sky-dragon_ , he recalled in Peg’s voice, another fragment broken out of the prophecies, glittering with mystery and danger.

“We could mount an offensive within days,” Rieekan answered. “If we neutralize Gol’s firepower, we need no further information about his schemes.”

“But first—” Han turned a look on the general that spelled _no compromise_ , “—we get my ship out. And the girl. Teragk’s going to demand that much for his cooperation anyway.”

“Any idea where she might be?” Luke caught the flicker of disquiet that passed through Han’s eyes when he shook his head.

“I didn’t have access to every part of that ship, but I bet she’s being held somewhere on the abandoned levels.”

“Yes, we must consider the girl’s safety,” Rieekan conceded after a moment’s reflection. “A command team will have to go in and at least attempt to rescue her. What do you suggest?”

“Teragk’s part of this swamping big mess.” Han spread his hands. “Let’s use him as a decoy.”

One glance between them was enough to outline the essence of a plan.

“The commodore can create an opening for us,” Luke proposed. “If he promises Gol the kind of crucial information that requires personal delivery, they’ll let him board the Mantura.”

“And once we’ve dropped the guards at the docking level,” Han picked up, “security routines’ll give us twenty minutes before the higher-ups start wondering. Half an hour, if we’re lucky.”

“Not a lot of time to locate and liberate a prisoner,” Rieekan said unhappily. “Still, our chances of forcing surrender will certainly improve without a hostage to complicate the situation.”

Han snapped him an incredulous look. “Surrender? You’ll get no such thing from Gol. You’d better be ready to blast him and his troops to kingdom come.”

“If we must,” Leia said tersely. “But before we start organizing an offensive, I’d like to know more about Gol’s files. Every bit of information about this man might be of help.”

“They detail business contacts and transactions over the last months,” Rieekan answered. “If we can identify the parties and commodities in question, it should give us some insight into Gol’s plans, but it will take a lot of research.”

Leia rose from her seat. “I suggest that we start with the entries Teragk removed. They should provide the most interesting information.”

 

Outside, in the shimmering breezes of midday, Han stretched his back and rolled his shoulders as if he’d just escaped long confinement.

“The waiting’s gonna be the hardest part,” he said with a lopsided grin, letting his head fall back.

“No doubt,” Luke returned, the better part of his attention absorbed into a study of the muscles that stretched gently along Han’s throat. “But it shouldn’t be too long. Only thirteen days until the alignment.”

“And then all hell’s bound to break loose if we can’t stop it.” Han shook his head and headed down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. “Save us from crazed patriots.”

And that could refer to Teragk as much as Gol. Once his silence had been stripped aside, the commodore had admitted to a willing collaboration of months. _For the good of an independent Corellia_. A belief that kept him upright and smiling under the harsh questioning from General Rieekan, foiling all regrets except one. _I didn’t realize that Gol’s plans will lead to nothing but anarchy before it was too late. And then they took my daughter_...

“You don’t believe in it either,” Luke said when they’d reached street level. “That it’s possible to establish any kind of order that will make the galaxy a more peaceful place.”

Han shrugged. “I just can’t see how it’s ever goin’ to work out. Guess I just don’t have that kind of vision.” His expression hardened fractionally as he glanced back at the squat structure behind them and the rank of uniforms standing guard at the entrance. “All this time, we’ve been played like trusting morons on a game board. It’s all they’ll ever do, y’know. Manipulate us. It’s more obvious in my case, but...”

“I know.” Admitting as much didn’t come hard. “Maybe I’ve grown used to being managed and directed,” Luke said. “Maybe it’s easier for me to accept because that’s the way I feel about the Force. That it’s working through me more than the other way round.”

They’d reached the iron footbridge, set like a corroded needle between the government precinct and the city. Daylight danced in silver across the dirty canal, and Luke’s thoughts took off in too many directions at once. He recalled crossing this barren stretch night after night, time coiled up in waiting for a closer sense of purpose.

“It also brought us back together.”

“What, you think we wouldn’t’ve found a different way?”

He smiled at the mocking challenge in Han’s eyes. “We would have.”

From the complete lack of doubt, his mind reached backwards, into the humid silence of Dagobah, into the heart of the moment when recognition had lashed through him and changed his direction. On the fringes of recollection something had long whispered, _destiny_.

A shortcut across the patchwork of decisions, impulsive reactions and coincidence, the scattered longings on their winding path to awareness. _Just me_ , Luke thought, _my own choice_.

Unquestionable, permanent and precious. The clarity of it made him feel whole in a way he’d experienced only once before.

He claimed another moment to look at Han — his back turned to the sun that glistened on his hair and lent his features a darker cast — and asked, “Don’t you?”

The moment’s tone changed unaccountably when their eyes met.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Han said, his voice lowered, pressured suddenly, and his hand curved around Luke’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he answered the question that had almost been lost to the capsized mood. “I do think so.”

Two men on a bridge locked in the stagnant flood of sunlight. A small burst of anguish committed the image to memory. Luke closed his eyes. Impossible to tell what it would take for Han to make his own choice.

The hand slid down his arm and broke contact gently. “Let’s go ‘n tell Castor and Chewie the news.”

* * * * *

A cool breeze off the harbor slipped under Han’s jacket and met the ghosts of adrenaline. In another hour, they’d be gone, maybe less, if Intell’s tracking gizmos checked out. As soon as the Mantura’s exact coordinates had been confirmed, they’d fly Teragk’s private shuttle into the bowels of Gol’s rost-bitten fortress.

Han rubbed the back of his neck and felt the buzz start right there, a fevered energy that promised deliverance. Like the Falcon’s own shadow wrapping round him, and one glance out through her viewport would show him the world at right angles again, back in balance.

Beside him, Luke watched the day’s downward crawl into evening, wearing calm confidence like body armor. _Couldn’t do it without you_ , Han wanted to tell him, except that Luke’d see right through to the other side of his hopes. Once the Falcon-shaped hollow in his life had been filled again, he’d stretch himself thin between the visceral pull to freedom and a mixed bag of commitments. To Luke, the Rebel Alliance, the legacy of his own accidental heroics. To Corellia, with its signature brand of craziness and all the sentimental ballast trying to wrap itself round his ankles, a useless weight. Han breathed in deeply.

Between storage towers, a fringe of twilight offset a pale slice of the moon, back on its controlled course like nothing had happened. Over the past three days, a host of techs had pitched in for a counter-miracle, patching up the contraption that shackled the moon to its manufactured twin. The holonets sported schematics like the latest revelation, disclosing in magnified detail how thermal detonators had knocked the two satellites apart, exact timing nothing short of brilliant, and it didn’t change a damn thing about the eclipse. All across the north, trouble spread with the erratic persistence of a bushfire. A regional tax office had been converted to bonfires the night before, and migrants’ camps sprang up everywhere on the Yannis islands.

“Maybe Gol’s started something he couldn’t stop anymore,” Han said, more to himself. “Even if he wanted to.”

Luke watched after an armored shuttle patroling above the piers. “I’ve been wondering... how do the brigades work?”

“The brigades?” One word could drag in a mixed bag of yesterdays, and Han braced for it in reflex. From a warehouse by the quay, the pungent scents of imported spice ambushed him, sparking a swell of memory.

His grandfather’s large hands locking around his shoulders to make sure he listened. Cleaning an old MerSonn rifle from the inside out, every second weekend, though he hadn’t fired a shot in years. Cracking nuts between thumb and forefinger, brown dust settling into the wrinkled skin.

“They used to be all the defense forces there were...” Han narrowed his focus to detach from the close presence of the past. “Before Corellia had a central government. The clan leaders trained the young men who’d organize the villagers in a fight.” Inside his head, an older voice mouthed all the words with a pride that could never be his own. “Later on, they went underground. Formed independent units, each with their guns stashed somewhere. They had their own passwords and secret meetings, that kinda thing.”

Luke nodded, his quiet profile overcast with speculation. “Would you know how to contact them?”

“It’s been more than twenty years since my grandad told me how to join.” Han shook his head. “Can’t imagine they’re still running things along the same routines.” He slid Luke another sidelong glance. “Why, you don’t think they’ve got anything to do with those riots? That’s not how they operate.”

“I was wondering if they’d help us.” Luke hitched up his shoulders, a small motion of pulling back into himself.

“If they got the impression that Corellia’s being torn to pieces, maybe they would,” Han offered. “Can’t imagine they’d subscribe to the whole turn-of-the-millennium thing.”

From the far side of the harbor basin, a bulky trawler chugged towards the docks. Floating on a cloud of repulsor steams, pasty white against the water, and Luke was studying it a little too intensely, like he needed some kind of neutral anchorage. Not much of a chance it had anything to do with the brigades, the prophecies — or even their plans to snatch the Falcon right back.

“What’s up?” Han asked, automatically lowering his voice. If he moved any closer, Luke’s electric silence would likely trip something loaded between them. The blond head turned away from him, pale threads of remaining daylight trailing the motion.

“When this is over,” Luke started. “I want you to know that I don’t expect you to stay... I mean, just pick up where you left off, or anything like that. If you want to go back to Ylab, or make a new start somewhere else, I won’t get in the way.”

Words that he’d used himself, another time, another place, rebounding with jagged irony. _When Luke comes back, I won’t get in the way_. A feeling like a loose cannon right behind that offer, and he’d looked stubbornly in the opposite direction.

And now that it backfired, he didn’t want to know where Luke got the notion.

“Well, there’s no rush.” Han tried for a casual tone. “Do I look like I’m about to bolt or something?”

“Not exactly,” Luke answered his purely rhetorical question. “But something’s missing, and I’m not sure what it is.”

A bleakness edged his tone that was alien to his nature. Han chalked it up to his own doing instantly, and it settled over him in full measure. But there was still a truth to spell out, if only for himself.

“Not sure I wanna go back,” he said, “either way. Last time round didn’t work out the way I’d thought it would, and I can’t hang that on Gol and the syndicate. Guess I gotta figure it out for myself, just...”

“Just what?”

The wrong thing to say, but he couldn’t keep it back either. “About you. Us.”

He could see Luke breathe in so sharply that his own chest threatened to cramp from watching. Mired in cross-threaded feelings that flashed back and forth between a magnetic pull and the logic of resistance.

“What I feel for you,” Luke said. “I don’t want you to think—”

“I’m not thinking.” A familiar surge had taken that place, strong enough to soar with promise and irrational belief, before it slammed headlong into instinctive warning.

“I don’t want to turn this into an obligation.” The tacit pressure faded from Luke’s voice, and every reserve had melted away when his eyes locked with Han’s. “I love you.”

Calm and clear, no longer unexpected, and it still caught him like a kick to his stomach. A cool gust blew some soft blond strands into Luke’s eyes.

“Luke, I...” Han swallowed against the crazy tightness in his throat. “I know you do.”

Was that all he could ever say? The sound of his own voice circled back to him, flat like a parody. Each word an effort, and if he’d realized that the truth would cut him like this —

_I can see it, feel it, almost touch it with my hands_.

So easy, to let it slip under his skin. His only safeguard the sober look that burned him each time, completely honest and revealing. All the empathy in Luke’s eyes, even now, and way too much trust for his own good.

He’d done it now. Hurt Luke to avoid hurting him. _Don’t rely on me. Don’t make me believe_. Absurd.

“It’s — you’re always sure,” Han fumbled, “but me... I don’t know that anything I’ve got’s gonna be enough for you.” He waved off protest before it came. “It’s not something you’re askin’. It’s me.”

Every other sentiment fractured around a cold, brittle anger. For a moment he was back on Coruscant, adrenaline rising to swamp his brains with chemical fear. With the gut-wrenching nausea of a wrong choice in the making. A door kicked open, right into carnage.

Han felt the short breath he drew stab at his lungs. The fickle emptiness that stalked him owed little to the past, it was a lack in himself. Some kind of dead trench between unchecked sentiment and the cynical clarity that survived every meltdown.

Right now, it sneered at his somersaults through reminiscence. One hell of a memory stash, for all his efforts to live at a reasonable distance from the past. Blotting out the future by the same token.

Luke’s attention turned inward only for a moment. “Because it didn’t work out with Leia?”

A symptom maybe, but nowhere near the cause.

Han managed a short shake of the head, past the cramping stiffness in his shoulders and neck. “You ‘n me... we’ve made a big difference in each other’s life. I don’t wanna lose what we had — what we already have.”

The deep blue fringe had crawled halfway towards the city, the water that slapped fretfully against the quays now brighter than the sky. When he glanced at Luke again, Han realized he was still waiting for a trace of impact — for some seamless shield rattling shut again — and then everything faltered before the mystifying complexity of Luke’s reactions, the way he could channel it all into something bright and cutting.

“But we won’t,” Luke said. “This doesn’t change anything.” In the middle of it, his fingers caught hard around Han’s wrist, enforcing that statement, pressing it into his skin.

Firm like the friendship they’d fashioned on their own terms, built around a connection that’d clicked into place almost at once. Han couldn’t tell if anger or disappointment charged Luke’s grip, or some kind of steeled effort to take them past the limits of this moment.

“Maybe I’m just not ready—” Han shut up and wrapped his fingers around Luke’s in turn, aware that coherent behavior was a distant dream. At least breathing became less of an effort.

“I can wait,” Luke answered calmly.

He couldn’t let himself believe that, though he recognized a losing battle in the jumbled patterns of his own pulse. All of one second into rational argument, Han opened his mouth to object, but right then, the comlink thwarted him with a grating whistle.

No need to translate Chewie’s roar. All set and ready for action. A savage energy crackle traveled the length of Han’s spine. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The buzz in his nerves picked up when they cut back to sublight cruising speeds. Han breathed out and let every thought fall into the vast dark spaces between scattered lights, a mocking reflection of his fragmented inner state. But for the time being, a single purpose had to take precedence. He aligned his mind with the clear-cut plan before him, starting a survey of its muddier hazards.

If the invite Teragk had procured for them led straight into an ambush, they’d see proof within the next few seconds. Every minor ripple of electric impulse that ran through the shuttle’s systems bristled under his fingertips. Han checked the long-range sensors and relaxed cautiously.

On the scopes flamed the Mantura’s readings in candid green. Awaiting the good commodore’s visit in orbit around a lifeless world, in a system of four equally lifeless planets. Just a hop away from the Corellian sector.

“Ready, everyone?” Breathless didn’t begin to describe the sound of his voice.

Close behind him, Chewbacca rumbled, exhaling steamily against the back of his neck.

“Sure,” Castor answered from the second passenger seat. “I’ve got the easy part anyway. I’m just the driver.”

“That’s right, and I want you to bail out at the first sign of trouble.” No predictions if Castor would promptly follow that order, but Han had to give it a try.

A stiff leather collar slid coolly against his throat when he glanced sideways at Luke in the navigator’s chair. Probing for signs of strain — for _something_ — like he had at regular intervals, ever since take-off. In profile, Luke’s focused calm looked natural enough, softened by the random play of indicator lights that revealed nothing.

“Okay,” Han said, “let’s go over this once more. There’ll be an escort waitin’ to take Teragk and his big business secrets to the old man — but not right away. They’ll want to run him through a thorough search first. Never mind that they’ve got the drop on him.” He pulled up one shoulder, scraps of earlier calculations bouncing back like ricochets. “Gotta take them down right after docking. And that’s when the countdown starts running.”

Half an hour to get to the Falcon, wrench the whereabouts of Teragk’s daughter from some helpful hoodlum, tramp halfway through the ship and back to the docking level... _Never quote me the odds_ , Han cut himself short.

“We locate the Falcon first,” he finished. “Soon as we’ve got her on standby, we look for the girl.”

“And whether or not we can find her, we’ll be carving a return path through Gol’s troops.” Luke’s tone implied no question.

“Yeah. Something like that.” A nervous grin took over. Luke caught it with a sidelong glance and a terse nod.

A sloping descent past the third planet brought the Mantura within visual range. Her main hull showing pale and skeletal through the girderwork, an eccentric cube with shapeless extensions that made her look like monumental shipwreck.

“She’s... huge,” Castor muttered, duly impressed and equally concerned, and the comlink chimed in at that very moment.

“Here we go.” Braced for any spontaneous turn-up of trouble, Han tripped the preset broadcast. If Teragk’s personal password didn’t hold water, they were sailing into cannon fire like wide-eyed rookies on a spring jaunt.

“Prepare for docking procedures,” the reply came through on audio, from someone who’d practiced hard to match the priggish tones of a droid. “Bay 14-A5.”

“Got you,” Han returned in his most neutral voice and cast another glance at the small display, hooked in awry with the rest of the shuttle’s instruments. A golden light smiled stupidly at him. One more gadget from Intell’s extravagant armory, amounting to a dirty little trick.

Fingers growing sweaty on the button, Han left it to Luke to coordinate the landing approach. The docking bay’s jaw closed around them in dulled steel, embroidered with guidelights. Magnetic shields coalesced behind them, and atmosphere restored itself, rising through the billow of repulsor steams. When the door on the far side opened, admitting the usual combo of six nondescript stooges in black, Han pushed the release.

Five seconds, and a colorless, scentless nerve gas laced through more innocent fumes. Another five seconds, and the stooges were out cold, pitched into blessed unconsciousness before they knew what’d hit them.

“Breath masks,” Han said and strapped on his own. He touched Castor’s shoulder in passing, the inexpendable “good luck” flung after him as he left the cockpit.

_Another homecoming_ , he thought, but the sarcasm flatlined into a weird fugue sensation, calling up the starts of a soft, buoyant dread. Like stalking himself across one more blighted zone. One hand on his blaster, he twisted his mind away from all high-wired notions and found himself facing Luke at the bottom of the short gangplank.

Not so long ago, the size of it all would have prompted a statement of some kind — _you don’t have to do this for me_ — but the look Luke turned on him drove change home in a flash. A look of total determination that grounded him. No pressure, no demands, just honed, quiet intensity. Han took it into himself at the broken pace of his breathing.

On the deck, gluey steam had settled over the fallen bodies with the gentleness of a shroud. The hiss from their breath masks rasped out of cadence, against a blistering silence.

Like a homing beacon, the wall monitor shimmered from across the bay, and Han moved on automatic, eyes racing down the docking list in another second. Gol’s men still observed the same routines, every parked ship duly registered under her own ID code. Close behind, Chewie mewled into the mouthpiece, a distorted, honking sound.

_There she is_. Han tapped the glowing line that identified the Falcon, giddy with premature relief. 14-B2. Same level. Only a couple of bays down the corridor. Under his own mouthpiece, prickling condensation mixed with sweat.

The moment they’d slipped from the bay, he yanked the thing off to dangle around his neck. Glanced up and down into welcome desolation, only the distant clanks of maintenance in progress rattling somewhere at their backs. Around the next corner, another troop of shadowmen would be growing bored guarding the lifts, but they weren’t headed in that direction.

“We’re going,” he murmured.

Two minutes stretched with the malignant ambition to incorporate an eternity. They walked at a steady pace, anonymous in black gear and clandestine purpose, Chewbacca trailing like a savage shadow. The Mantura’s desolate hollows hanging over and around them like greedy echo chambers. Yet something told Han that Luke held the Force extended in a mobile, vibrant screen. A breathing space that moved with them.

When they finally slunk into the doorway marked 14-B2, Han felt every muscle down his back pull tight in apprehension. He studied the status monitor above the systems panel. Everything shone back blithely normal, except that a sterile field had been activated inside the docking bay. Han frowned at it, ignored a small twist of disquiet in his gut, and tapped in the general clearance code. _Maybe Gol wants her for another one of his sensitive transfers_...

His stomach dropped to the approximate level of his knees when the door reeled aside and no alarm slammed them backwards — nothing but the sight of the Falcon sitting dark and peacefully at the center of a dim expanse. It took his best effort to control an idiotic impulse to bolt across, put his hands on her marred hull and bring her back to life with a personal command. A guttural moan from Chewbacca tightened his throat some more.

Han sucked in a long breath, then another. “All right. Now for the difficult part... Chewie, you get the Falcon ready for take-off. And if you hear the blooey from me, you’re on your way, no arguments.”

For several strung-out seconds, the Wookiee towered over him, trying his level best to spear him with an icy look. Then he barked the most grudging affirmative of a lifetime.

“Good.” Han reached out to pat shaggy fur and turned back to the door, fresh adrenaline running cold in his blood. “Ready?”

Across the short distance, Luke gave a nod and a clipped smile, and the blustering energy crystallized, intensity sparking between them like the snap of a drawn blade. The door rolled open again, the gritty noise awful in the quiet.

They were four paces down the corridor when every recess and doorway came alive to spit brilliant gunfire at them.

“Back!” Han snapped pointlessly and triggered a random shot from the hip, an angry surge blurring his view of the battle lines.

Shadowmen coming at them from all directions, aiming to cut off their retreat. Yet fire ceased at close range — _capture them alive_ had to be the order of the day — and the situation got bogged down in muddled hand-to-hand combat.

Dodging someone’s roundhouse punch, Han flung himself towards docking bay 14-B2, one hand inches from the controls when the melee resolved into three separate silhouettes darting towards them.

Before he could step in, Luke whirled with fierce, perfect timing, and a vigorous kick sent one man careening into the other. Han caught the third by his wrist. Another feint and a brief tackle, and he had his guy in a stranglehold, almost stumbling when the door slid open at his back.

“Get behind me!” he shouted at Luke, across a furious Wookiee roar from the depth of the bay.

The belligerent group fell back as he set his blaster against a vulnerable temple, dragging a human shield backwards into minimal safety.

Beside him, Luke activated the locking mechanism, but Han’s captive gave a choked sound, and that was when he recognized Jiffra Kemál. The frantic white in her eyes, and his arm still locked around her throat. With a resounding clang, the durasteel door sealed shut.

“Solo...” Jiffra croaked.

Luke’s blaster coughed sizzling plasma at the controls and fused the locks beyond deliverance.

“Damnit, Solo...” Tangled auburn hair fell free of a constraining cap when he released her to a close-up view of his gun muzzle.

“How long ‘til we can take off?” Han raised his voice against another irate howl from Chewie. A faint throb through the deck plates asserted that the Falcon was powering up, but there was no way they could start her engines cold and hope to avoid a burn-out.

“Han. Listen to me...” Jiffra straightened shakily. “Gol knew you’d come. I can’t tell you what he’s got planned, but—”

“Can’t or won’t tell?” he cut her off.

“I don’t _know_.” She grimaced, a gloved hand lifting to rub at her throat. “But I can tell you one thing, and that’s _get out of here at top speed_. Take your ship and—”

“Gol is holding someone hostage aboard.” Luke had moved up quietly, a feral alertness in is body language.

“The girl?” Something twitched in the corners of Jiffra’s mouth and vanished behind forced composure. “Forget it. Even if she’s still alive—”

“What’d they do to her?”

Her dark eyes shifted towards Luke, then back to Han, gauging possibilities while she made up her mind. “Now listen good. Gol’s conducting experiments with some kind of lethal virus. Somewhere belowdecks... well, you’ve had a look at those unswept corners, haven’t you?” Jiffra’s chin rose, but her defiance thinned with the gesture. “I heard they were using the girl to test it.”

From a wrinkle of Han’s mind, the shielded crates from Yerod III skittered into the picture, hitching on the scuttle of vermin across an abandoned deck. “A virus?” A retrograde chill crept under his collar. “Any good reasons why I should take your word for this?”

“Just so happens that I’m here undercover.” With the lopsided start of a smile, Jiffra tossed her head back. “And so were you, apparently. Too bad we didn’t figure it out earlier.”

“Yeah?” he returned abrasively. “So who’re you _really_ workin’ for?”

Muffled noises filtered through the door, the screech of a high-powered drill pronouncing their narrowed time margin. A step to the side, Luke snapped up the comlink to contact Castor, but his glance flung a warning at Han.

“I was hired by a major combine in the Corporate Sector,” Jiffra said. “They’re worried about Gol messing with their profits, naturally.” She paused, eyes hooding with a layered bitterness — the only proof for her claims Han knew he’d get. “Dayton was my partner. Someone must’ve sold him out, but so far they haven’t connected me with Dayton’s private agenda.”

Subsonic vibrations hovered on the air, eddies of energy spreading outward from the Falcon’s drive.

“Why didn’t you mention any of this before, or at least give me a clue?” Han asked.

“I wasn’t sure what you were all about, Solo.”

The drill’s wail pounded through the door, and their options were dwindling rapidly. Han cast a quick glance at Luke. “You’d better come with us.”

Jiffra shook her head, overruling a second’s hesitation. “I’m staying. You’ll have to stun me, but the big bays don’t depressurize anyway. I’ll be okay.” She let her arms fall to her sides. “And my cover’s gonna hold together a little while longer.”

“It’s your call...” Deliberately slow, Han raised his blaster to reset range and energy levels. A hum lifted up from the Falcon, gaining resonance until it jostled the air.

“Half a minute,” he hollered back at Chewbacca.

At the corner of his eye, Luke turned towards the ramp, and his finger pushed the trigger one millimeter at a time. Jiffra offered a smile like a needed reassurance, but when the watery beam coiled around her, collapsing that smile and the straightness of her spine, the queasy feeling in Han’s stomach didn’t let up.

The countdown running, he made the cockpit after twenty-eight seconds. Both hands tearing across the controls before he dropped into the flight chair, each touch calling up a shiver of energy, a flicker of lit signals from the board while repulsors came online and balanced the Falcon’s weight against gravity.

She turned on her axis, gathering power to face a glistening eye of night, unblocked, rimmed by the pulsations of fading magnetic shields. The grind of her engines started small fireworks in Han’s brain, every moment ever spent aboard seeping back in, scattered into particles — and take-off left him weightless, his mind blank with the force of elation. For all of three seconds, clear space formed a protective bubble around them.

“They’re on to us,” Luke said sharply, while Chewbacca reached over his shoulder to prime the quad guns, fangs glinting in a gleam off the flight console.

From the docking level below, a swarm of snub fighters and gunboats streaked after them, plowing space with all the elegance and coordination of rutting dewbacks. Teragk’s shuttle registered a distance ahead, hurtling Castor out of the danger zone.

The Falcon flew like a dream. Mesmerized by her flawless guidance response, Han rolled and flipped her through the loose ranks of pursuit, right hand flicking to the com between one maneuver and the next. Static roiled in every channel. Gol’s people were jamming all frequencies. No way to alert Rieekan’s battle group now — they’d anticipated that move, too. Han ground his teeth down on a curse. By the time they’d blast out of jamming range, the Mantura would be hitting lightspeed. The scopes painted her passage out of the gravity well in ponderous green.

Hijack the Falcon, rescue the girl, nail the Mantura. _One out of three_ , Han recapped the mission for himself, the thrill of high speeds much closer than the bite of failure. All around them, laser blasts splashed the blackness with fractured crimson.

“Channel’s clear now,” Luke said. “Transmitting coordinates to General Rieekan.”

Han checked the scopes one more time. “He’ll get a great view of the Mantura’s ion trail, and nothing else.”

The navicomputer latched on to their jump coordinates, an abstract point rushing forward to meet them. He grabbed the lever, the slight tremor in his hand nothing but anticipation that shot through him like the pearly flash ahead.

On his next breath, the Falcon lurched across a brink of night into that luminous margin. The frantic rush settled with the familiar burst of white brilliance, but there was still a mist of cold sweat down his back, something thrown off-kilter that attacked his control.

“We’ve done it,” he heard his own voice as if he’d been saying it a hundred times over.

“Yeah,” Luke said softly. A conditional smile appeared as if in afterthought. “Castor got away safely, too.”

Though their jump could be measured in minutes, Chewbacca levered from his seat at once, impatient to check out every inch of the ship for damage and dirty meddlings. Halfway down the corridor, he grumbled his suspicions about a rattle from the direction of the flux stabilizer.

“Yeah, you let me know,” Han answered mechanically.

He could run diagnostics from the flight console, but he’d be hanged if he relied on witless instruments alone. The worn leather of the flight chair molded pleasantly against his back. Han relaxed for a moment, until he noticed the vivid tracks of doubt in Luke’s expression.

“Something bothering you?”

“It can’t be right,” Luke said slowly. “If Gol’s experimenting with the Fallow Strain virus, it couldn’t have killed the girl. Corellians are immune to it.”

“That so?” Han muttered. “Reassuring.”

But he plucked something else from memory, the sound of a voice humming unsteadily in the dark, skewered by the tap of Gol’s cane.

“Maybe it’s a completely different virus.” Luke rubbed his knuckles across his chin. “I don’t know... Something about this simply makes no sense. And how did Gol find out we were coming?”

Now there was a cheering topic. “Maybe he didn’t trust Teragk not to buckle under pressure.” Han grimaced. “Or they rigged the docking bay with a masked alarm that brought on the troops.”

Across the board ran a fluid countdown of their time in hyperspeed, aligned with the slow leakage of confidence that he couldn’t stop. His inner eye focused backward across the docking bay with its mangled locks, Jiffra sagging boneless to the deck plates.

“Do you think we can believe her?” Luke asked, as if he’d been reviewing the very same scene.

“Yeah. I saw her react to Dayton’s death... and maybe that’s why she wanted to stay.”

“For revenge.”

Odd, how Luke’s neutral tone could reveal so much. Instinctive understanding. Unwanted resentment.

“Might give us a crucial advantage to know someone on the inside...” Han prepared for the switchover to sublight. Still waiting for all-eclipsing relief to set in — the sense of a connection re-established within himself — but it wasn’t happening.

He slapped the comlink — “Chewie, park yourself somewhere safe” — and felt the shudder of transition before it came.

It hauled them out of lightspeed a little too close to Corellia’s gravity shadow, the slight divergence just within tolerance. Temporal space restructured, and the viewport’s segments sliced the planet in halves, framing cloudscapes over lucent blue.

Han pulled the voice pickup towards him again. “Found anything yet?”

Intraship scanners teased him with a fractional waver of readings that made no sense. Out of a brittle pause, Chewbacca’s grumbles catalogued minor complaints. Nothing to sweat about.

“Yeah, well, keep looking,” Han muttered beneath his breath while the com board traded digital handshakes with Orbital Traffic Control.

“We’ve got a response from Rieekan...”

From the way Luke left the sentence hanging, he could easily guess at the backwash. Anger tightened Han’s chest while the Falcon dived smoothly under the surface of Corellia’s atmosphere. Proposed landing coordinates trolled up on the navicomp’s display.

“Han...”

A gentle concern shaded Luke’s voice — something that made it impossible to meet his eyes — while clouds piled up across the viewport.

_Don’t blame yourself_.   
_Now you’ve got all you wanted_.   
Set on a nose-dive for ground zero.

The com flared into an affronted Wookiee growl.

“Locked? What d’you mean, locked?” Han centered internal diagnostics on the portside cargo hold and checked for organic readings on a hunch. If one of Gol’s hitmen had stowed away, he sure approached his job from the inside out.

Odd signals blossomed all over the shiny square like a manic infestation. _Something alive back there_...

“They didn’t mean to catch us,” Luke said, low and ferocious. “They were _herding_ us back to the Falcon."

“Yeah... I think you’re right.” Adrenaline fired through his veins as Han leaned towards the com again — “Chewie, don’t!” — and a roar rolled back all the way to the cockpit. _Don’t open that goddamn hatch_.

“Take over!”

He ripped away from the flight console and barreled towards the hold, winded by an upsurge of adrenaline.

“Chewie, leave it alone!”

The shaggy silhouette turned statuary by the half-open hatch, a black crack into bedlam. Han stared at it. Something flickered under the glowpanels like a curl of smoke. Swarmed. Rippled thickly along the conduits. Nothing but head trips and shadow. And a tiny prick near his wrist.

He wheeled, slapping the spot in mid-motion. A faint buzz in the air racing him back to the cockpit. “Go for the main hold, Chewie!” he called over his shoulder. “And lock the door!”

His skin crawled noxiously when he lunged through the doorway, indicator lights dancing like fireflies towards the landing approach. Luke’s hands were busy on the console. Exposed.

“What is it?” He didn’t even look up.

“Out. Get out now.” A dreadful comprehension rasped in Han’s throat.

The cockpit’s slide door wouldn’t seal up airtight, but the nearest storage compartments did.

“Bugs. From the portside hold.”

_Carriers_ , but Luke already knew that and shook his head no.

“You said Corellians are immune!” Han grabbed for his shoulder, more than ready to wrestle Luke from the navigator’s chair. An icy chill rising through his spine. “Lock yourself in—”

“What about Chewie?”

“Him too.”

Whatever Luke could see in his eyes prompted movement, finally, towards safety.

“ _Go_!” Han’s fingers stumbled over the controls with incessant, fevered insistence. “I’ll take her back up, gotta disinfect the whole ship before―”

An electronic scream aborted Luke’s retreat, overload lights bobbing trenchant alarm across the bulkhead.

They’d lost control over the guidance systems. They were going to crash.

The prospect loomed into Han’s inner vision with jagged black angles and reversed every option in a heartbeat. From this point onwards, he needed Luke right by his side.

“Here.” He scooped up a pair of gloves from the tool box and tossed them at Luke. “And wrap your head with something.”

Trackless instruments cheated on him, ditching gravity compensation and directional radar. The Falcon skimmed low under the clouds.

“We’re gettin’ too close to the capital...”

The navicomputer spouted gibberish while they lost altitude to some warping processor implant that broke up every reasonable command on its way to the power core.

“I’ll try broadcasting mayday on emergency frequencies.” Luke had pulled up his jacket into a makeshift hood that muffled his voice.

“We need to get her out into open country.” Past the madly jangling altimeter, Han launched a punch at the aft thrusters, provoking an outburst of speed to correct their course.

They shot out northward over the fringes of the capital. Idling vehicles in the lower lanes scattered out of their errant path.

No chance in hell that they could isolate and neutralize the problem before impact. Repulsor control turned flaky in the middle of Han’s systems check. Straining fretfully, he listened for a malicious buzz among electric whispers, but couldn’t tag anything. Maybe a constant seepage of static in the cockpit kept the creepy pests at bay. 

“No bigger settlements for the next fifty miles.” Luke’s hand moved across a sensor panel as if to stem another dizzy glitch by touch.

Han threw him a hard stare full of calculation and fury. Dwindling altitude canceled the option of ordering Luke and Chewie to the escape pods. All around them, the Falcon’s circuits teemed towards overload.

_‘M gonna lose her again_. Mechanical acknowledgment of fact, free of rebellion now. The moment froze in stark lines when Luke met his eyes, anticipation suspended between them. They were united, danger enhancing a sudden intimacy that spilled warmth into Han’s veins. _I’ll get you out of this one_.

“We’ll cut speed by taking the core off-line,” he said. “Soon as we’ve found the right spot to land.”

“That’s going to blow the drive matrix,” Luke objected.

“Not if we synchronize shutting down with the motivator cycle,” Han returned. Hardly mattered now anyway, so long as it saved their hides.

Acres of brown countryside blurred into stratified dissolution, dotted with the specks of small towns, power plants and drill stations. Several minutes into the future, the horizon divided into sloping russet and faint silver.

“There.” Han narrowed his eyes at the bright strip ahead, expanding into a wide, serpentine mirror. “That lake...”

The shadowline of a settlement infringed on the eastern brink of the water.

“... _the falcon will seed the earth with destruction, then drown beneath the waves_.” Luke’s voice, reciting fragments from someone else’s nightmare.

Han swallowed convulsively and angled for the pickup. “Chewie? We’re gonna land on water. Got an emergency blanket anywhere near? Wrap yourself up before you come out.”

On the righthand shore, hanging wads of smoke screened the settlement. Pinpoint lightning stabbed up between the fogged structures.

Han trained his eyes on the lake. “Ready?”

“Standing by.”

“On three.” Emergency override tingled his fingers with imagined protest. “One, two—”

Rampant velocity jerked into abrupt blockage, and they were careering headlong into mirrored sky. Shards of exploded silver sprayed against the viewport.

Impact rocked through Han’s bones with amplified detail, the clash and wobble of water beneath them, surface tension ripping to pull at the Falcon until she bounced back up into an oblique balance. Held afloat only by shrinking pockets of air, she’d drift and sink in time. Water leaked in through all the heat exhaust vents that had opened with entry into atmosphere.

_Gotta evacuate_. Relief wrenched at Han’s stomach as he shut down whatever auxiliary systems still responded to direct orders. The rest would fizzle out in the water, but at least those miserable bugs Gol had hatched in his private darkness would drown alongside. He reached across to touch Luke’s arm. “Come on.”

Chewbacca met them in the starboard hold, the blanket’s steelfiber an awkward shroud around his massive body. No trace of the goddamn bugs here, not yet. A gurgling quiet closed in when Han sealed the doors. Teeth clenched, he moved to unlock the top hatch. Through the slow dilation fell a beam of dazed sunlight, forming a perfect circle. He waved at Chewie to go first, and for once there was no protest, just the creak of underused hydraulics as the cargo lift hoisted upward. A sequence of clogging shadow and restored light glanced across Luke’s face, shaped like a sickle.

Han met his silent question, his reluctance with a look. _You know how it is. Captain’s last to leave the ship_.

When his turn came, it felt every inch like being hauled from the bottom of an ocean, tons of silt and water hanging on him. Dazzled by abrupt brightness, Han scrambled out through the aperture, into an inland breeze that carried the smells of dry razor grass and smoke.

Another moment rippled with memories, and his attention lowered into the Falcon, her vulnerable, silent bulk. _Sorry, baby. We’ll come ‘n get you later_.

He pulled himself up on her scarred back, sealing the hatch with the heavy manual crank. Before him, the cockpit’s glistening facets lay still over the liquid sway, and the wind blew stronger now. Beside him, Luke knelt with his hands on his thighs as if concentrating on the gentle rocking that strained the Falcon. Safe.

A stutter of gunshots punched a hole into the pause and set time running again. Somewhere in the depth of gray over the settlement, a blinding beam jabbed up and faded again. Luke was on his feet, reaching a hand to Han. He gripped back hard.

“Seems like we’ve come down in the middle of a riot zone.”

“Our kind of luck, huh?” Han scanned the nearer shore where short stone piers bit into the water, only some hundred meters away. Silhouettes milled at the vanishing point of an unpaved street, diffuse in a whirl of dust. So much for drumming up assistance in the lakeside town. Even accessing a working com terminal looked less likely by the minute.

Han shrugged, releasing Luke’s hand long moments too late. “We’ll have to go around it somehow. Swimmin’ to the other side won’t do us no good either.”

Chewbacca agreed with a surly growl. Nothing but a nebulous range of cleaver trees and rough hillocks hailed from the west.

Han took a step out onto the Falcon’s bow mandible. “Time to take another plunge...”

Dripping wet, they pulled themselves up on the battered pier a few minutes later. Han checked his blaster, rivulets trailing gunmetal-gray down the barrel. He glanced back with abrupt detachment, like he’d slipped into someone else’s memory. The Falcon a shadow spread out on the water, slowly pulled under by her own weight.

Thick drops pelted him as Chewbacca shook himself, and Han took it as his cue to get going. Water squashed and creaked in his boots.

The settlement had grown around a trade post with its improvised market square, and from the look of it, that whole area had fallen under siege. Beneath the pall of smoke, invisible parties mixed it up with sporadic blaster salvos and the deep bellow of ancient projectile weapons.

“I always said Corellians’re crazy, but this...” Han swept his wet hair back from his face. “I don’t get it.”

“Factions are forming everywhere...” Luke trailed off into troubled silence. The afternoon sun dried his tunic in patches; plastered against his skin, it sculpted his muscles in fleeting shadows.

They passed a heavily shuttered garage, a cluster of workshops flung out against the southern edge of the settlement. Overhead, smoke spiraled out on the breeze.

“We can’t stay here, but we can’t walk to the next town either.” While Luke slowed his pace to cast about for alternatives, Han tried activating his comlink, confirming its death by water.

“No point waiting for the rescue teams — if our mayday even went through.”

“Castor will realize that something went wrong,” Luke pointed out.

“Yeah, but how long ‘til he can get word through to Command? ‘Til they locate us?” Han shrugged. “There’s gotta be a relay station somewhere. If we can’t get a message out, we gotta commandeer a flyer.” The sun, hanging low, burned on his forehead. From one moment to the next, he wanted to slam his fist into something.

Around the next corner, a mangled glider had been pulled halfway across the street, a token barricade. Chewbacca ruffled his damp fur disdainfully.

“Yeah. Not what I had in mind.”

Before Han could add anything more, a group of four came scampering down the street, the tinkling rush of shattered glass behind them. Han fell back into the shadow of the nearest building, his vision sharpened with alarm. The group dragged something along — a bulging sack that raised a carpet of dust — and on the rooftop across the street, a metallic glint swerved to aim.

Han’s shot followed the discharge so fast, it might have been an echo rebounding off the mud-colored walls, and the gun’s glint fell like a meteorite. Luke had his blaster out too, he could tell that much without looking, some strange battle reflex resonating between them.

Rapid fire slammed across in return, from a second shooter somewhere up on that roof, the running group just passing. With a roar, Chewbacca stumbled backwards.

“Chewie!” The dark patch of singed fur leapt out at him, and although the Wookiee grunted it was nothing, Han yanked him flat against the wall. Blaster raised, Luke stepped in to cover for them.

“We’d better try that garage. With any luck—” Han bit off the rest. Hardly sensible, to invoke luck at this point. “Let’s make a break for it.”

Another flurry of gun-barks pattered after them, wide off the mark, but by the time they reached the garage again, all that enthusiastic shooting had definitely moved closer.

At the back of the compound, a corrugated iron door sagged on brittle hinges and failed under fire at close range. Han kicked it out of the way. Several ground vehicles in various states of disrepair cluttered the yard, but at the very back they discovered a hovertruck from pre-Imperial days. The door to the driver’s cabin had been taken off and leaned rusting against the carcass of a binary mower.

“Climb in.” Han tugged at a bent cover plate behind the truck’s steering lever. “I can hotwire this thing.”

He pulled a multitool from an inside pocket and wiped it dry on his pants, a critical eye on Chewbacca who folded himself painstakingly into the passenger seat. Blue sparks fluttered across exposed wires and dredged up a rumbling engine cough.

“Not sure how far this’s gonna get us,” Han muttered. “We’d better refuel soon.”

Luke closed the remaining door on the passenger side. “We should head north-east. I took a closer look at the maps when the quake hit, and from what I recall, several bigger towns lie that way.”

The truck’s sputters smoothed out into a deep, grinding drone, and within another half minute, they’d gained enough altitude to pass the derelict gate. Across the rear reflector glanced the frenzied crimson of another plasma discharge somewhere down the street.

“North-east,” Han repeated their bearings. His skin itched where the damp shirt dried in crinkles. “Let’s hope people’re still sane up there.”

They traversed spikes of lengthened shadow at a steep angle, on a course for the rolling high moors. Everything divided between unrevealing landscape and a snarl of misgivings. The scent of smoke lingered long after they’d crossed a final line of wire-fence.

“That’s the last time,” Han said finally, into the monotonous engine growl that throbbed in the crowded cabin. “The last time Gol’s put something past us.”

“He must’ve been planning this very carefully.” Luke had leaned sideways, against the dust-fogged window. “They rigged the Falcon so that we’d carry the virus down planetside and crash, preferably somewhere in the capital.”

“And they planted a computer bug that kicked in the moment we entered Corellia’s atmosphere.” Han’s throat seized around a lesser spell of anger. Reconfiguring the Falcon’s guidance systems would take a while, once they’d fixed the damage done by flooding. “We gotta get a tech team out here’s soon as possible to heave her outta that miserable puddle. And decontaminate her.”

“We came close to fulfilling the prophecy,” Luke said with some reluctance.

“That the line you quoted? About — what? — seeding the earth with death or something?” Han snorted. “Too damn bad there was no audience to watch the spectacle.”

He wouldn’t give in to the stifling sense of being jerked around like a stray thought in somebody else’s head, period. Below, ranks of wind-slanted cleaver trees held their ground against the blanket of brown lichen. Thorny crowns threw a deformed shadow web across the ground. He’d never traveled this far out, too bewitched by the city and the chance of deep space directly above it, between the glimmers of ship yards and subspace buoys that winked on with dusk. Odd, to think that Luke knew his way around these parts better than he did.

A question rolled low in Chewbacca’s throat.

“No, doesn’t seem likely,” Han answered. “Teragk wants his daughter back, he couldn’t risk cheating on us. And I don’t think the girl’s dead either.”

“If Gol’s experimenting with a different virus,” Luke put in, “we can’t predict its effects.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t want to harm any true-blooded patriots. Trust me on that count. Whatever he’s got in mind, he’ll make sure only offworlders take the brunt of it.”

“Maybe we should still have our blood tested before we return to the capital,” Luke said. “Just to be sure.” Beneath carefully projected resolve, his voice simmered with impatience.

“I guess.” Han cranked the steering lever to hike the sluggish vehicle up over a rise.

Evening was starting to wash up against the sky in deep blue like frozen oxygen, and with it, relief set in again. Han breathed slowly around it, sheltered it in the muddle of tactical reasoning. Safe for the while, they’d managed to cut a vital chunk out of Gol’s plan. Those septic germs weren’t going anywhere, and the Falcon in her water berth was out of Gol’s reach.

From protective detachment grew a sense of freedom that widened Han’s lungs, gliding between his thoughts with the smoothness of outflung wings. From the rear reflectors bounced the bronze darts of sunset. A sidelong glance caught them sliding across Luke’s hair and profile, at the speed of loosened feelings. As if the shield broken down on Tatooine could never be raised again, no matter what. Their eyes met with that weird sense of an absolute connection.

A smile had cropped up unnoticed, and for a moment or two, the space between them filled, jangling Han’s senses like an element of its own. Until Chewbacca rumbled softly, unhitching his preoccupation.

Suddenly self-conscious, Han checked the truck’s instruments again, but the contagious freedom carried over, soared aimless and unlimited. Strange only because he hadn’t felt anything like it for so long.

_Just Luke ‘n me ‘n Chewie_ , he thought while they tramped through emptiness that should have been his homeland. _Ain’t nothing we can’t do_.

In the roll of the moors, rugged depressions and gullies flooded with shadow until the dimness flattened all the browns and heavy purples into uniform gray. Han darted another suspect glance at the fuel gauge. “What d’you think, how much longer?”

“Another hour, at our present speed,” Luke guessed.

The terrain was growing rockier, pale crags and boulders blooming like disorganized markers from the sharp blackness night cast around them. Over the ruptured horizon bobbed agitated lights, imitating a spray of dislodged stars.

“Look at that.” Han pointed through the narrow windshield. “Might be another village coming up.”

Luke leaned forward over the dashboard. “I don’t think so.”

Embedded in the rush of headwind was the raspy purr of several engines. The bright pinpoints magnified rapidly, now zooming resolutely towards them.

_Security patrol?_ Han wondered, though that much luck came straight from the haunts of fantasy. And if they’d run into a band of marauders, there wasn’t enough speed in the truck to pull them past a blockade. Chewie growled apprehensively as the piercing headlights flared close.

Eyes squinted, Han shifted gears and brought the truck to a grudging stop. He counted eight speeders and rangecars that dropped into a vague circle around them. Out of the slanting white beams coalesced half a dozen silhouettes, armed with long rifles and pulse guns.

“Get out, gents,” a gravelly voice shouted, thickened by the harsh brogue of the north. “Hands on your heads, if you please.”

“’Least they’ve got manners," Han grumbled, unlatching the security strap off his blaster. “Tell you what, if they get fresh with us, we can always grab one of their flyers.”

With a derisive snort, Chewbacca readied himself for a headlong charge, but Luke’s body language betrayed not a thread of worry. He slipped from the truck, confronting the bristle of cocked guns with easy confidence.

“Who’re you?” the command voice bellowed. “And what’s your business here?”

The trenchant brightness stung in Han’s eyes as he climbed down from the cabin, and he blinked irritably. “Just passing through,” he offered in nonchalant tones, gauging their chances in combat. “Matter of fact, we’d appreciate directions to the next town.”

Hands laced behind his neck, Luke stepped closer to one of the silent guards and said, “Peg.”

The guard’s rifle lowered. “So,” a woman answered, something like amusement in her voice, “you’ve got it all figured out?”

“Not all of it, but maybe the most crucial things.” A startled smile preceded every other reaction when Luke swung back around. “I think we’ve found the brigades.”

* * *

Bonfires crouched under a sliding wind that whipped past diminished walls. In the middle of shaggy trees hunkered the ruins of an ancient mansion, only a black cross of rafters left of the entire roof. Among the fallen squares from storage houses and stables nestled tents like outsized mushrooms. And from that direction approached someone else Luke seemed to recognize.

“You were at the conference with the Mon Cal,” he said.

“So I was.” White hair flared up with the fireshine. The man’s eyes took on a sharper interest when he looked Han over. “Solo. You’re nigh on two decades too late.”

Han gathered his wits out of a fluster that made him feel twenty years younger. “Sorry to’ve kept you waiting.”

The man’s teeth shone as white as his hair. “’S okay. I knew your grandfather, and you bet I heard a lot about you while we were on patrol together. I’m Sal Antram. Officially, I’m one of the clan representatives with the Corellian council. Inofficially...” He swept a hand across the shadowed grounds. Broad-shouldered and alert, a boulder of a man. “I’m in charge of this rabble.”

“Glad you found us.” Han struggled through another swerve of memories, so many tales about the brigades spinning loose in the voice of his grandad.

“So am I.”

Half a step behind him, Chewbacca gave a soft woof and sucked the air noisily, as if scenting for danger beyond the whiffs of woodsmoke. _Relax_ , Han meant to say when he turned, but the nearest fire picked out a smudge of clotted blood in the Wookiee’s fur.

“And that’s _nothin’_ , huh?” he asked angrily, skimming two fingers across the matted strands. “We should get you checked out at a med center, pal.”

Fangs bared, Chewbacca directed a mocking snarl at his concern, until Antram suggested a compromise. “Let my people take care of this.” He thrust his thumb towards the biggest bonfire. “Sit down and have a drink with us. I imagine there’s a lot we need to talk about.”

 

It turned out that the group carried only shortrange comlinks, their combined capacity insufficient to reach the cities, with no relay station anywhere near. The brigades still communicated by an old messenger system, quaint though probably effective at its own pace.

While the fire-heat wandered across his face and torso, Han spared a few moments to speculate about the rate of the Falcon’s descent to the lake bottom. Might take weeks, until all the remaining air had seeped out of her.

Some steps away, an awed junior officer was dabbing disinfectant across Chewie’s injury. Luke had settled on the other side of the flames, next to the woman he called Peg. Her graying hair swung forward as she pushed another branch into the fire’s core. Han figured she had to be the restorator working on the Guild Hall frescoes. He glanced from face to face during introductions, five middle-aged clan leaders gathered around this fire that severed them from their lives as farmers, miners and administrators.

They’d acknowledged him with restrained curiosity, intrigued yet reserved, maybe pulled back and forth between his own reputation and his grandad’s notoriety. A runaway charge returned in his own halo of fame.

Too much of this was colored in the ways of a dream, frazzled by fireshine and the crop of memorized tales, overlaying the scene with a haze that rippled strangely in Han’s senses. The man next to Antram handed him a stone mug, spiced ale splashing generously over the lip.

“We’re hoping you can enlighten us,” the old man said. “It’s not our habit to interfere with anyone’s faith, and none of us expected the Skylars to grow rabid about their beliefs. Now we fear that we’re on the brink of a civil war if we don’t act fast. There’s a lot going on here that makes little sense.”

His hands wrapped thoughtfully around the mug, cradling it with a reverence that triggered another memory. _Just like grandad_... Han took a swig of ale to clear his throat. Across the fire, Luke’s glance focused him and hauled him back to the present.

“It’s not just the Skylars,” he started. “There’s someone else pulling strings in the hope the Alliance’s gonna be driven from Corellia.”

“I’ll say.” Antram scratched his beard. “And who might that be?”

So far, the matter had been handled confidentially, circulating only through Intell’s underhand network, but Han couldn’t work up any qualms over spilling the story. “Gol,” he answered and watched startlement wash across each face in turn. “Yep, he’s alive, and planning revenge for a slight that goes back twenty-five years.”

“Long memory,” Antram muttered. “Seems like that’s become our folk’s curse these days.”

“Tell us what you know,” Peg said, briskly wiping froth off her upper lip. “If Gol’s behind all this, that madman’s got to be stopped.”

There were no interruptions while he talked, arranging facts and guesswork into something like logical sequence, from the syndicate’s operations in the Iridys sector to the snarl of diplomatic fallout, Teragk’s double-dealing and the Fallow Strain.

Peg considered Luke with a long glance at that. “You had a hunch about it, I remember. A Jedi hunch.” Mild irony tempered the statement.

“Yes. But that didn’t help me see what was going on.” Luke had linked his fingers tightly, and Han thought how agonizing it had to be, to snatch at glimpses of the truth that came clear only in hindsight.

“I wonder,” Luke said haltingly. “Did Gol rely on us alone to spread the virus? He doesn’t usually leave anything to chance.”

Instant spikes of cold materialized in Han’s gut. “He could have it shipped here easy. Doesn’t even have to use one of his own couriers.” Any sealed crate aboard an innocent cargo hauler could hold the noxious breed. “We need to get word out to Leia — Minister Organa,” Han corrected himself, “at once. All organic freight’s got to be screened and sterilized before anyone comes into contact with it.”

Unsettled and alarmed, he pushed up, but Antram waved him back. “Give us her frequency and scrambling code, and I’ll have a message sent to the minister. Trust us. I’d much prefer if you stayed with us a little longer.”

“All right. And we’d better send her the Falcon’s coordinates too.” As Han sagged back down onto the warmed stone block, a short wave of dizziness ambushed him, and perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised. At least thirty hours stretched between this moment and his last bout of fretful sleep. To his right, Chewie stared dazed and hypnotized into the fire, a white crust of bacta foam gleaming from singed fur.

Antram conferred with an earnest young man who raced off towards the parked vehicles after he’d taken down all the particulars. The wind carried the spicy scent and the pale seed capsules of beadbrush, and whipped volleys of sparks from the fires.

“If it’s true that Gol’s agents operate among the Skylar groups,” resumed a brigade officer, “we need to single them out.”

“Yes, but even if we isolate and arrest them,” Peg said, “that might not solve our problem. The situation has developed its own dynamic. Perhaps by now the Skylars believe they’re fighting for a just cause.”

“But their fight is still based on deception,” Antram argued. “If we can make them see how they’ve been manipulated, they won’t take kindly to it. It’s certainly worth a try.” Hands on his knees, he gathered himself up. “I’d better set up a meeting with all the section leaders.”

“And fast,” Han agreed. “We’re only one week away from the alignment, and the Mon Cal delegation will be here soon.”

Uneasiness flickered around the fire, averted glances betraying less than enthusiasm at the prospective alliance with the Mon Cal. Antram took note of it with a shake of the head.

“We’ve been over this before, lads.” His patriarch’s tone subdued every show of dissent without effort. “Now. Merek, Steav, come with me. We need to organize a watch over the Skylar groups, to separate our wayward wheat from the chaff.” He aimed another glance at Han. “Excuse us for a while.”

He walked out into darkness, and from the outer ring of bonfires, several men and women joined him. Arms crossed over his knees, Han hunched his shoulders against another chill of fatigue. Caught somewhere between excess tension and a slow ebb of energy.

Across from him, Peg rummaged through a knapsack, producing a loaf of bread and a malt bottle. “You must think us an odd bunch,” she said to Luke. “Here we are, with our reputation for pragmatism, travellers and traders for centuries, and half our people are turning batty over old legends and prophecies.”

“It’s their tradition,” Luke offered. “Maybe these things are two sides of the same coin... a need for some beliefs to remain stable and unshakable.”

Peg chuckled and chewed on the bread. “That’s a very gracious way of looking at it.” Someone had placed a collection of earthen cups on the slab next to her, and she poured the malt diligently. “Of course, there’s our natural tendency to get all worked up over matters of independence, too.”

“I’d noticed,” Luke said dryly, slanting Han a quick smile that stung unexpectedly.

“So...” Peg started handing out the cups, “what else do you think Gol has planned? He’s a fine candidate for the Reaper’s part himself, I should think.”

Though Han tried to track down the reference, the flames distracted him, slamming up high through a dry bale of thornscrub. The violent light leapt across Luke’s mobile features and fashioned shadows that wavered into brightness, a dance of dissolution that spread reminiscence through Han’s mind, until he was back at the fires on Endor, blazing against a sky filled with celebrations. Sparks on the updraft like tingles on his skin.

This was how he’d always remember Luke, the night of their victory, restive flames raising a subtle ferocity from his stillness. He’d sat with them and said little, demanding silence like his due. A riddle of contrasts, earthy and remote at the same time, unchanged and unfamiliar.

Peg’s angular features softened into a charmed look at Luke’s smile, and in all honesty, Han couldn’t blame her. They were still talking about characters from the legends that stirred only vague notions in him.

_I can wait_ , Luke’s voice reassured him again, and the more he questioned the possibility, the more he wanted to demand it. More time. He studied Luke through the fire, like he could decode a secret in the fitful light.

“The Reaper’s son?” Luke asked. “Who would that be?”

“In Gol’s terms?” Peg shrugged. “I wonder. But here’s something else I recall...” She shook her hair back from her face, voice lowered by half an octave so that the crackles of burning wood laced seamlessly through it. “ _Death danced with him and branded him, in the prime of his youth, on the brink of battle, and his words are sweeter than wine_.

“That’s from an old poem.” She raised her cup in a mocking toast. “He’s a prophet.”

Han drained his own cup fast, thinking _superstitions and nonsense_ , yet for some reason the words unbraced him. Wrapped around Luke with random precision that arrested him in the fractures of his past. _Death danced with him_ —

Han set his cup down and felt dizzy again. Maybe it was the drink sloshing round in his empty stomach, though the prospect of eating didn’t better the feeling. Beside him, Chewbacca was nodding.

“What’re they gonna do when it’s all over?” he asked abruptly. Jolted from conversation, Luke watched him quietly, like some double meaning had crept unnoticed into his question. “The Skylars,” Han tried to clarify. “It’s not like they’re starting a revolution or anything. Just their way of preparing for the end of the world.”

“There’s always reason for discontent,” Peg ventured. “Old grudges and rivalries, manifest problems like the decline of industry in this area. A lot of them must have seized this opportunity to vent their frustrations.”

“But when the end of times doesn’t come—” Luke started.

“—are they gonna pick up their lives like nothing happened?” Han finished, resenting the distance between them with sudden vehemence. “Just stopping the whole thing might not be good enough.”

“Yes, our council had better consider that, too.” Peg cocked her head and eyed him with a maternal kind of attention. “You look beat,” she said bluntly. “Not too many comforts in our camp, but if you don’t mind sleeping on bedrolls, I’m sure we can make room for you.”

“We’ve crashed in worse places,” Han returned, sidetracked by the private smile Luke sent his way. The brightness in his eyes steadier than the copper flares ranging between them. From the outglow of the fire, a flush crawled over Han’s throat and face, slow and lingering.

“You can borrow one of our vehicles in the morning,” Peg proposed. “To get you back to the capital.”

“Thanks.” When Han pushed to his feet, into a layer of cooled night air, his vision blurred for a moment. Between the trees hovered late fireflies, glowing pinpricks that whirled in drunken rapture.

He knuckled his eyes while they followed a younger officer to the scattered tents. Chewbacca lumbered along, grumbling skeptically at the human-sized shelters.

“It’s not much,” their escort said apologetically and busied himself folding the foremost tent’s flap out of the way.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it.” Han poked Chewie’s side as if to nudge him out of his cranky, sleep-deprived mood. “He’ll sleep with his feet sticking out, no problem.” His glance skipped from the next tent back to Luke. “And the two of us can share.”

Olive canvas spread out from a lightsteel structure that could be taken down and packed in a matter of minutes. Through the fabric shimmered the bonfires, now adrift in smoky green. Han stooped under the low roof, almost stumbling as he groped for the light affixed to one of the poles.

“Are you all right?” Luke touched his elbow.

“Just tired.” A battery-powered glowbulb crackled softly as it turned on.

“I’ll be around in awhile.” Luke bowed out through the entrance with a brisk motion. “I’d like to talk a few more things over with Peg.”

“Right.”

It shouldn’t unsettle him that Luke wore the glow of an urgent mission like battle armor, or maybe that was just his imagination going wild with too many unprocessed notions.

Han unwrapped the bedrolls, flopped down on the tangle without patience, and pulled off his boots. All he had to do was close his eyes, and the past thirty hours started to scramble by in hazy acceleration. Retrieving the Falcon only to find she’d been corrupted to make a weapon against them, and the vicious spray of water rushed suddenly in his ears. The sequence replayed itself, a little frenzied yet inconsequential, like none of these events had done more than scrape the surface of his mind.

Through the open flap, a cool draft wound in, admitting tiny insects that flirted recklessly with the glowbulb’s heat. Too tired to get up again, Han watched them forage, crazed dust specks weaving in and out of the light, and thought about the plague aboard the Falcon. Reality had taken a sharp turn into deranged fancy since they’d strolled around the harbor.

The definition of that memory jarred him with a pang that was pure loss.

He’d pushed Luke away, rejecting what was given regardless, and now it felt like a rift within himself, spilling a hunger he couldn’t trust, couldn’t stop. Like the truth he’d wrestled forth had opened a vein and all the resistance was bleeding out of him, every rational conclusion and experience, until he wanted to retract each word. It didn’t make any sense.

Han shifted on the bedroll. The heaviness in every limb tugged him towards sleep, but his skin prickled defiantly, with a phantom of the fire’s sheen. He strained to hear voices out there, edgy at his own unrest.

_C’mere, Luke, gotta have you near me_. Almost believing he could compel Luke’s presence, connect again on a level of sheer instinct that bypassed every question. Seemed like ages since he’d slept with Luke on the rooftop, a sinuous breeze and Luke’s breath blending on his bare skin. The remembered sensation played havoc with his pulse, made him feel spellbound and flustered like a teenager — except that he’d never had it so bad back then, not for anyone, and he’d never chafed at being alone before. Couldn’t get much worse than this.

Footsteps approached over trampled dirt and the tufts of razor grass, and he caught himself holding his breath to listen closely. Didn’t open his eyes until the flap rustled with gentle movement.

“I thought you’d be asleep by now,” Luke said, a trace of woodsmoke hanging around him, the liquid call of a night-bird bobbing in over his shoulder.

“Found out anything useful?” Han wadded up the bedroll to prop his head against it, almost taken aback that his voice sounded so level. Not thickened at all, or simply, miserably grateful that Luke had chosen this moment to show up again.

“I hope so.” Luke sank cross-legged onto the bedroll and picked absently at the grass-stalks that clung to his boots. “I’m thinking that Gol intends to draw on the most powerful images of the prophecies, and that’s what we were trying to figure out. Like the city in the sky...”

Another innuendo clicked into place. “So that’s why he named his ship—”

“Yes,” Luke said. “Mantura. The same name, essentially.” But his glance tracked sideways and Han could tell he was thinking of Cloud City — its brazen prominence at sundown — though how he knew that he wasn’t sure. Maybe his own fencing with reminiscence had tripped a short-circuit in the memory flows. He noticed the small, decisive motion Luke used to disengage when he straightened his back and pulled his tunic over his head. His ribs arched as the light swung over them.

And it _was_ hot in here, like the tent had hoarded sunlight throughout the day. Han tried to swallow some moisture into his dry mouth. Things could get worse after all.

Worse was when Luke looked straight at him, his posture loose and relaxed, and said, “We’ll get to the Falcon tomorrow. Don’t worry about it.”

Han’s stomach clenched at the way Luke assumed that, naturally, his mind had taken root leagues away. _Selfish bastard_ — exactly what he deserved, he thought, a bad taste in his mouth. Like he’d cheated Luke out of something vital. Luke, who’d struggled so hard to reclaim his own feelings and put himself at risk one more time.

“I ain’t worried about her now,” Han managed.

“You shouldn’t be.” Luke yanked his boots off and sat back on his haunches to smooth out the bedroll. “Guess we both need a rest now.”

Beautiful in the pallid lighting that pooled in his collarbones and washed lazily down his torso.

Han shook his head. “Don’t do that. Shut me out like this.”

There was no pretense in Luke’s startled reaction. “I’m not. Han...”

No longer distant and preoccupied, no longer shielded in resolve. Han found he could raise a hand now, out of that odd, dazed uncertainty, and his hand caught Luke in mid-motion, skating up his arm to hook around his neck.

The sudden caress of Luke’s mouth on his own leapt into ardent focus, and everything else regrouped around the sensation that pierced and stunned him, all the shadows in the tent shifting minutely. He was hanging on hard and tasted another chance in the kiss, in the kick-start of hope within him. When he pulled back, the glowbulb’s weak spill transformed to firelight in Luke’s eyes.

“Missed you,” Han murmured, though it was the damnedest thing to say, Luke’s breath on his mouth easing his own.

“I can feel it.” Something ignited at the back of Luke’s glance, growing hot with recognition. “Let’s get you undressed.”

He leaned over and skimmed a hand across the top of Han’s chest, fingertips inching under the fabric of his shirt. Snapping fasteners aside, the purpose in his touch starting a sear of pleasure that took out Han’s capacity to shape a sensible reply.

Overhead, the patterned dimness unlaced into a drunken sway when Luke started to peel him out of his clothes, playfully at first, then deft and earnest, his hands spreading cool comfort across overheated skin. Each caress lingered, passionate and intent, until Han could feel an electric spell sink through to his bones.

All his nerve endings bristled for attention, and the shattered heat surged into his groin. He was coming apart, alarmed at the intensity — scratched past thirty-four and floundering through a sea of reactions like a juvenile — while Luke’s hands roamed all over him.

Seconds expanded and minutes skipped his mind, and it was only when Luke moved across him, into the rough friction of skin and want, that he snapped back into a moment’s clarity. Luke had stripped off his own clothes and molded against him, a thin glow of sweat sculpting his shoulder. And it hurt, damnit, wanting him.

Both hands buried in the dark blond hair, Han pulled him close until he could feel Luke’s heartbeat pound through the cavity of his chest — each drum-roll a flash of longing — and how anyone lived with that much feeling he couldn’t imagine.

His arms locked tight around Luke while Luke rocked them in urgent silence, rising and falling over him. The slide of Luke’s hair against his neck soft as rainfall, predicting the path of parted lips up his jaw. He gasped when Luke breathed into his mouth, a taste of forgiveness that opened his senses, his lungs, and felt like deliverance.

His hands framed Luke’s face, and he looked up from the churning wildness of his pulse to meet Luke’s eyes. Blue like the haze around the sun at dawn. He was flying on the rasp of Luke’s breaths, insistent like the throbs of his erection, pressing out through silky skin where they connected.

Han gave up trying to pace himself and bucked into the tantalizing pressure. A delirious certainty in the rhythm that welded them together, and he reached flashpoint much faster than he would’ve dreamed, a thrill like sunlight slicing his flesh. He groaned in its grip, desperate to feel Luke join him in that moment’s fullness, the rush of heat and pulse that drove him. Pushing hard, Luke let his head drop, and a single sound escaped, wrenched out past control and into startled delight. Han slid both hands down his back, sheltering the long tremor that went through Luke’s frame, through them both.

A moment later, Luke’s hand rose from his jaw to his forehead. “You’re feverish.”

“That’s just... you,” Han muttered when he’d regained enough of his breath.

“No, it’s not.”

Luke levered up to study him, but with a final effort Han fixed a grip on his shoulders. “So maybe I caught a cold back there in the water.”

He wanted to keep Luke with him, draped over him for the rest of the night, every thought suffused in the closeness of his skin. Balanced awkwardly, Luke tugged a blanket around them, but finally had to move aside and rose to turn off the light. Weariness washed up fast with the fall of darkness. His head was swimming.

“Luke...”

“I’m here.” A hand anchored to his breastbone. “Go to sleep.”

There was something rueful in Luke’s voice, and he wanted to counter it, but drowsiness was folding over him. A flicker of departing insects stirred the air above his face, and a slow shiver beset Han, urging a knowledge he wanted to refuse out of instinct. Luke’s fingers slipped from his grasp and he dropped down a canted slide, into the heatspell of his own body and familiar darkness.

Sucked past the rhythms of steel segments and shadow that didn’t yield any purchase, Han struggled to open his eyes again. The corridor slanted perpendicular, and he was falling through it, into the past, and past the trap door that opened into the black belly of violated rooms. Pools of spilled booze on the floor, clothes strewn out like flotsam, and someone had pissed on the scattered pieces of underwear.

_I should’ve known should’ve known_ —

He tried to twist around, but his boots stuck fast in molten slag and formex that scorched through the soles, and because he hadn’t made his choice on time, someone would die. In the sullen breeze, the tent flapped like a sail.

_If I could make it all work out, just this once_ —

Night folded around his own sluggish heartbeat like superheated dark honey, with a strangely sweet taste in his mouth. The fever thick in his veins. He flailed to plunge himself upward and broke the surface gasping.

At last he could feel Luke surround him with his arms. Through the diluted darkness, he murmured, “But I did the right thing... the right thing... this time.”

* * * * *

**Author's Note:**

> First published as a standalone novel in 2001.


End file.
